Not the Honeymooners (or, How Juliet Got Her Groove Back)
by trixietru
Summary: Lassiter and Juliet go undercover as honeymooners, while Juliet continues to deal with the aftermath of having been kidnapped by Yin. Set a short time after 5x02, "Feet, Don't Kill Me Now."
1. Chapter 1

Title: Not the Honeymooners (or, How Juliet Got Her Groove Back)

Rating: PG for this chapter, NC-17 later, because there is a tragic deficit of Lassiter/Juliet smut in the world.

Summary: Lassiter and Juliet go undercover as honeymooners, while Juliet continues to deal with the aftermath of having been kidnapped by Yin. Set a short time after 5x02, "Feet, Don't Kill Me Now."

Author's Note: The last time I posted a WIP, I was mostly very good about updating every week. I hope to do that again with this fic, but I'm not making any promises. However, I do promise that it will be finished eventually.

"The two of you will be going undercover," Chief Vick said, and tried not to sigh as both detectives' faces predictably lit up.

"Yes! Finally, a chance to whip out the Slovokian accent I've been working on. What kind of scum will I be going undercover as, Chief? Drug kingpin? Pimp? Weapons smuggler? PETA activist?"

"No fake accents. Also," she said, anticipating his interruption, "no fake moustaches, beards, sideburns, goatees, soul patches, or dreadlocks. The same goes for fake scars, injuries, tattoos, or noses. The only disguise either of you will need is these."

She pulled two small boxes out of her desk drawer and handed one to each of the detectives. Lassiter opened his to find a wedding ring,

"Chief, what's this about?" Juliet asked, puzzled, staring at her own ring.

"You two have been requested by the narcotics unit to assist on an investigation. You both know who Zachary Copeland is?"

"Of course," Lassiter said, exchanging a glance with O'Hara. "The crime boss. He's rumored to be involved in drugs, guns, prostitution…but no one's ever been able to prove anything."

"That's right. For the first time, we've got a really solid lead on his organization that could finally put him behind bars. Our information has it that he's meeting with one of the heads of the Columbian drug cartel at the Regency Seasons Resort this weekend. We want eyes and ears all over the resort. The villa we believe he'll be staying in is directly across the courtyard from the honeymoon villa. Which is why I want the two of you there."

"So we're posing as newlyweds?" Juliet asked, taking the ring out of the box and trying it on experimentally.

"Yes. Here is the information you'll need for your cover identities," Chief Vick said, handing them each a folder. "Like I said, we'll have the place staked out from top to bottom, but in terms of sheer proximity, you two will be the closest, and from your vantage point, you should be able to see everyone coming in and out of the front door of the villa. Before the end of the day, I'll have detailed descriptions of all of the players in Copeland's organization that you should be familiar with."

"We have a lot on our plate right now, Chief," Lassiter said, eyeing his own ring uneasily.

"That's true," Juliet agreed. "Carlton and I are still investigating the Catrow murder, and working on following up on the robbery at Shnitzky's Diner, to say nothing of the fact that we're still trying to catch up on the case load that accrued while I was…away."

"I thought the two of you would jump at the opportunity to be a part of this bust," Vick said, sounding disappointed

Exchanging another quick look with his partner, Lassiter said "We absolutely want to assist in bringing Copeland down. We just wanted to make you aware of the caseload we'll be putting on hold for the next few days."

"Get Miller and Dobson up to speed on the diner robbery, and call in Mr. Spencer and Mr. Guster to take a look at the Catrow murder."

Before Lassiter could lodge his automatic (and inevitably ignored) protest at calling in Spencer, Juliet said. "Shawn and Gus are out of town until next week. They went to the Spam Festival."

"The _what_?" Lassiter asked in disbelief.

"You know, Spam. The canned meat?"

"Yes, but how can there be a fes…you know what, never mind," the Chief said. "The less I know about anything called the Spam Festival, the better. As much as I hate to say it, the Catrow investigation can be put on hold for a few days. You haven't made any headway on it this week. Maybe some time away will give you a chance to regroup and come back at it fresh. And if not, I'll have Mr. Spencer take a look at it when he returns."

"When should we arrive at the resort?" Juliet asked, as she opened the folder with the undercover identity details and started reading.

"Your reservation is for tomorrow afternoon. Pack a bag for the weekend. Casual clothes, Carlton," she said sternly. "It's your honeymoon. Look, I know this is a different kind of assignment than what you're used to. I also know that you both typically jump at the chance for undercover work even though...well. As I've told you before, Lassiter, you're never more obviously a cop than when you're trying to pretend to not be a cop. On the other hand, O'Hara, you tend to embrace your undercover identities so wholeheartedly that frankly, it's a little bit terrifying. I'm hoping that the two of you can balance each other out."

"We'll be fine, Chief," Juliet said. "You don't have to worry about us."

Vick sighed. "Just make sure that there's no honeymoon equivalent of the $800 skates, okay O'Hara?"

Seeing that Juliet had the stubborn look on her face that suggested she was about to argue, Lassiter intervened. "O'Hara, get together our findings on the diner robbery for Dobson and Miller and see if they're free to meet with us to go over the details of the case," he said, and she nodded, heading for the door.

"On it," she said, pausing to add, "also, I still think that those skates were completely necessary to maintain my cover. And, they were cute."

Lassiter lingered for a moment after she left. "I'm not so sure this is a good idea," he said, once he was certain his partner was out of earshot. "She's only been back to work for a couple of weeks. Maybe it's too soon to send her out on an assignment this high-profile."

"Have you seen any evidence that she's having any kind of difficulty?" Chief Vick asked him, concerned.

"No," he admitted, "but that doesn't mean that she's ready for something like this."

"She has to be ready sometime," Vick said, her tone softening as she added, "and you can't protect her forever, Carlton. Frankly, she would be offended if she knew that you were trying."

Lassiter went back to his desk to read over the details of his undercover identity, surreptitiously watching Juliet as she made a phone call.

He was worried about her.

Since she had come back to work after her…vacation, as he liked to think of it, she had been quieter. More serious, less perky. While there had been a time early in their partnership when he would have been glad to see such a change in her, now he was used to being greeted with sunshiney smiles and cheerful chatter.

The differences in her personality weren't drastic – she smiled, she laughed, she argued with the Chief about roller skates – but there was an underlying melancholy in her that he'd never seen before. She tried to conceal the circles under her eyes with make-up, but he could still see them, evidence that she wasn't sleeping well, and he had caught her a few times staring off into space, distracted and distant.

She came over to his desk now, handing him the Shnitzky's Diner file. "Dobson and Miller are going to meet with us in an hour in Conference Room B. I think I might run out and get something to eat. You want something?"

"Anything but Spam," he said, and she laughed.

"Hey, this afternoon do you want to set aside some time so we can go over our cover identities? Get our background straight?"

He shrugged, turning his attention back to the report he was typing. "I'm not sure we'll have time. Simon Catrow's brother is coming in this afternoon to answer those questions we had about Simon's safety deposit box, and at 4:00 I have a meeting with Chief Vick and Lieutenant Sanchez of the Patrol Division."

"After your meeting then," she pressed. "I think it would be beneficial to make sure that we're on the same page."

"Fine," he agreed, but in the end, it didn't happen; they got called to a homicide mid-afternoon and spent the afternoon and evening chasing down and charging the abusive boyfriend who had gunned down his ex-girlfriend. It wasn't until after 10:00 that night, as they walked out of the station together, that Juliet brought it up again.

"We're not going to get any time at all to talk about our undercover assignment," she said unhappily.

"It'll be fine, O'Hara. Look, why don't I pick you up in the morning? We'll have plenty of time to go over things in the car."

She nodded in agreement, looking at her watch as she did, and sighed. "Crap. I missed my krav maga class tonight."

"You're taking krav maga?" Lassiter asked, intrigued.

"I just started a couple of weeks ago," she said distractedly as she fished her car keys out of her purse. "It's a really good form of self-defense for women because it's not dependent on being stronger than your opponent."

"That's pretty badass, O'Hara. What got you interested in it?"

They had reached their cars, and she was opening the door to her little Bug and not looking at him. "Oh, you know. I like to be prepared. And it's a good workout. I'll see you in the morning, Carlton."

"Yeah. Good night," he said, watching as she got into her car and drove away, his earlier concern for her not the least bit diminished.

Juliet was falling.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She couldn't close her eyes, could see the ground rushing up to meet her, and knew she was going to die. She was going to smash into the pavement and all of her bones would break. Her blood vessels would burst. The pain would be unimaginable. Her face would be unrecognizable.

She jerked and woke up, her heart thudding heavily in her chest, her skin clammy with sweat. You're safe, she told herself, checking the drawer in her nightstand to make certain that her gun was still there. _Safe_, she chanted in her head, as she looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:17 in the morning. _Safe_, as she checked the locks on the front door and the window, gun in hand, and put on a pot of coffee, because there was no point in trying to go back to sleep after she had the dream.

In her dreams, there was never any Carlton and Gus coming to save her. There was only the snap of the rope holding her in place and the rush of air as she fell and the certainty that she was going to die.

She wondered sometimes if Abigail Lytar dreamed of drowning. She hoped not.

She turned on the TV and found a mindless sitcom to leave it on, the familiar rhythm of the jokes and the laugh track somehow soothing to her jittery nerves. It was probably good that she was up so early, she told herself; she needed to be better prepared before her undercover mission got underway.

While she waited for the coffee to finish brewing, she sat down at her kitchen table with her gun and, with hands that were still trembling, disassembled it then put it back together again. She did it twice, not coming close to beating her best time, but after the second time she had stopped shaking and the dream had faded into the background of her mind.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and read over the Copeland file again, studying the information about the people in his organization that were expected to be at the resort that weekend. After that, she read up on her cover identity, getting out her highlighters and colored pencils in order to make notes about everything she needed to know about Jessica Livingston, elementary school teacher from Dayton, Ohio, and new bride of insurance auditor Colin Dwyer.

After she had come up with a satisfying history for Jessica and Colin (they had been set up on a blind date by friends; one of Jessica's fellow teacher's had a husband that worked with Colin and had been engaged for a year before tying the knot in a small church ceremony. They had spent that year saving for their dream honeymoon on the coast of Santa Barbara, which Jessica had longed to visit ever since she was a small child, when her grandmother had made a daily ritual of watching the soap opera named after the city).

Carlton would undoubtedly say that she was overpreparing, but she thought it was only smart to know as much as possible about the person she was pretending to be.

While she packed a suitcase for the weekend, she thought more about Jessica and Colin. What drew them to each other? Well, Jessica had probably been instantly smitten with Colin's big blue eyes and broad shoulders and commanding presence and ability to outdraw criminals and get confessions by glaring at miscreants…wait, no, Colin was an insurance auditor. His ability to, uh…Nope. She couldn't come up with anything sexy about insurance auditing.

Not that Carlton was sexy when he was outdrawing criminals or getting confessions. Or if he was, she had certainly never noticed. And she had also definitely, definitely not noticed how nice he looked from behind when he was standing with his hands flat against the table in the interrogation room, leaning forward to make his point, his shirt snug against his shoulders, his slacks snug against his…

Okay, maybe she HAD noticed. But only in a strictly professional way.

Right. She was supposed to be thinking about Colin and Jessica. They must have shared interests of some sort. Sports, maybe. Or movies. She thought about Carlton's unlikely love for _Grease_ and smiled. Maybe Colin and Jessica were both movie buffs, the kind who saw all the Oscar nominees and made elaborate bets about what was going to win and went to midnight showings of big releases. That would be nice, going to something as simple and normal as a movie with Carlton. He could buy her popcorn and put his arm around her and…

_Colin_, not Carlton. She was going to have to be careful about that.

Popcorn. Popcorn sounded good. She realized that she had been up for nearly two hours without eating, so she made herself some scrambled eggs and toast. Her appetite had been off since the clock tower incident (as she preferred to think of it), so she tried to pay attention and eat on as regular a schedule as she could manage given her unpredictable job. Her therapist told her that it was normal for her eating and sleeping patterns to be off kilter for a while after a trauma like the one she had experienced, so she tried not to be impatient with herself over not being the same as she was before.

She hated that she now thought of her life as "Before the Clock Tower" and "After the Clock Tower."

The sun was up by now, so she went for a quick run before showering. Carlton arrived just as she finished getting dressed, and she opened her front door and waved him in.

"Do you want some coffee before we go? I haven't unplugged the coffeepot yet," she said, heading back to her bedroom to grab her suitcase. She didn't hear a reply, and when she came back out, she found him staring after her with a dumbfounded expression.

"Carlton? What's wrong?"

"O'Hara! What the hell are you wearing?"

She looked down at herself, confused. "A dress?" she ventured cautiously. A cute little sundress, if she did say so herself, feminine and pretty and appropriate for a new bride on vacation in sunny California. And best of all, it had a matching chunky-knit cardigan that covered her shoulder holster.

"The Chief said no disguises!" Lassiter snapped.

"It's not a disguise. It's a dress. I'm supposed to be on my honeymoon, I can't very well wear a pantsuit and…oh, Carlton, is that what you're planning on wearing to the resort?"

He crossed his arms defensively. "There's nothing wrong with what I'm wearing."

"You're dressed the same way you always dress! You're even wearing a tie! The Chief told you that it was casual dress."

"It's my most casual tie!" he protested. "And these are my casual shoes!"

She set down her suitcase and went over to him. "You look like a cop," she said, tugging the knot on his tie free before he could protest.

She unbuttoned the first two buttons on his shirt, her fingers grazing against warm skin and springy hair, and was struck with the insane urge to keep unbuttoning. Instead, she brushed her hands across his shoulders, dusting away imaginary lint, and straightened the lapels of his jacket. When she looked up at him, she saw that he was watching her with eyes as big as saucers. Hastily she stepped back, smoothing down her skirt.

"That's better," she said, trying to ignore the sudden awkwardness. "Now you don't look so much like you're going to arrest anyone."

"Okay," he said, looking anywhere in the room but at her, "thanks. I'll take your suitcase to the car while you finish locking up."

"Great," she said, and was relieved when he left the room. What the heck was that?


	2. Chapter 2

Once they were in the car, Juliet started talking so that neither of them would dwell on that weird moment in her apartment. She told him about the history she had made up for how Jessica and Colin had met and asked if he had anything he wanted to add to Colin's biography.

"He's an insurance auditor," Carlton said. "From Dayton."

"Yes," Juliet agreed, "that's in the file. I was thinking you might embellish on that a bit in case anyone asked us any questions. This is why your undercover assignments never go well. You don't use your imagination for anything beyond cosmetic changes."

"Whereas you get overinvested when you go undercover," he shot back. "Didn't you break a girl's nose once?"

"It was roller derby! She knew the risks."

"Anyway, we're not going to talk to anyone, O'Hara. We're going to be holed up in our villa watching Copeland, and everyone will just assume that we're…doing newlywed things."

She grinned. "Newlywed things? Like what, writing thank you cards? Returning four of the five toasters we received? Changing the beneficiaries of our life insurance policies?"

"Yes," he said sarcastically, "all of those things."

"Speaking of romance, I forgot to ask yesterday, but how did it go on your date the other night?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he muttered. "Women are soul-sucking demons who exist only to destroy a man's happiness."

"You do remember that I'm a woman, right?"

"I try not to think about it, O'Hara."

She rolled her eyes but persevered. "You took her to a nice restaurant?"

He glared at her for continuing the conversation, but answered reluctantly. "Yes. It wasn't the restaurant. It was me."

"Did you talk too much about work?"

"No!...maybe. I might have mentioned something about the Vashers case."

"Oh, Carlton. You mean with the head…?"

"Yes."

"And the acid…"

"Yes."

"But surely you didn't bring up the garden shears…"

He sighed. "Yeah, I did."

Remembering the particulars of the case, she scrunched up her nose in disgust. "Eww. That's worse than the dead clown story. What were you thinking?"

"It's a fascinating case!" he argued. "And it was on my mind because the trial is coming up next week. I've been reading over the report again because I'm testifying."

"It is a fascinating case," she agreed, "but it's a little gruesome for first date dinner conversation, don't you think?"

"Apparently so," he said glumly. "I really don't know why I bother trying anymore. What about you? Have you gone out with anyone lately?"

"No. There hasn't been anyone I've been interested in." Truthfully, her libido had been on an extended vacation since the clock tower; some of the literature she had read afterwards on coping with trauma suggested that this was normal. In fact, having inappropriate thoughts about her partner that morning was the closest she had come in months to feeling anything akin to sexual attraction. Hmm. She would have to consider that further later, when she wasn't alone in a car with said partner.

They spent the morning at their desks, tying up loose ends on outstanding cases, until Chief Vick called them into her office and handed Lassiter the keys to a rental car.

"Remember, while we will have a number of people undercover at the resort, Copeland is likely to do the same, so keep up appearances when you're around other people. Don't engage him or any of his people – you're there strictly for surveillance purposes."

As they drove to the resort, Juliet studied a map of the layout of the villas.

"Where did you take Victoria on your honeymoon?" she asked absently, noting that the honeymoon villa was right on the beach. Too bad she probably wouldn't get much of a chance to enjoy it.

His grip on the steering wheel noticeably tightened. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I was just curious."

"We went to Hawaii. She had always wanted to go. I couldn't really afford that on my salary at the time, so her father gave us the trip as a wedding present."

"That was nice of him," Juliet said, as she recalled that Carlton's former father-in-law had seemed less than nice.

"No, it wasn't," Carlton assured her. "It was just the beginning of him showing me that I wasn't good enough for his little girl."

She winced. "Sorry I brought it up."

"It was a long time ago," he said with a shrug, and deftly changed the subject. "Do you want to take the first watch tonight or the second?"

"First. We can switch off at three."

"Why not two? You could get an extra hour of sleep that way."

"No, I haven't been sleeping that much lately anyway, so you might as well take the extra hour," she said without thinking, and then immediately wished that she could take the words back.

He glanced over at her and she went back to studying the resort brochure, pointedly not looking at him.

"Is everything okay, O'Hara?"

"Everything is fine, Carlton. You talked with the guys in the tech department about how to set up the camera, right?"

"I've done it before. Are you sure—"

"Yes. Oooh, do you think there's any chance I can sneak out in the morning and try the breakfast buffet? It sounds amazing."

They had reached the resort, and a valet was fast approaching to take their car. Lassiter ignored him and turned to really look at Juliet.

"O'Hara…" he started to say again, but she interrupted him.

"Lassiter, I'm back. 100%. Trust me."

After a moment, he nodded. "All right then. Let's do this thing."

**

While Lassiter got them checked into the resort, Juliet pretended to study the fountain in the lobby, the camera bag holding their surveillance equipment slung over her shoulder. In truth, she was looking around to see if she could spot any of the people from Copeland's organization that had been included in the files provided by the Narcotics unit.

"I'm sorry," a young, dark-haired woman standing near Juliet said, "but did I hear your husband tell the desk clerk that you were here to check into the honeymoon villa?"

"That's right," Juliet said, smiling happily at the woman as she put on the persona of Jessica Livingston Dwyer. "We just got married yesterday!" She held up her hand to show off the wedding ring.

"Congratulations! I'm sorry to be so nosy, but I just got engaged myself, and it's nice to see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel of picking out caterers and bridesmaids dresses."

Juliet laughed politely, wishing that Lassiter would hurry up. "Congratulations yourself! I know, it's all a huge pain, but it's worth it in the end."

"I know it will be. I just have to make it through three months of craziness first. Oh, hey, here's my fiancé now! Zack, come over here and meet…"

"Jessica," Juliet managed around her shock, because the man joining them was none other than Zachary Copeland himself. "Jessica Livingston. Well, Dwyer, now."

"I'm Arianna and this is Zack. Jessica is here on her honeymoon, sweetie, isn't that nice?"

"Congratulations," Zack said, shaking her hand. "Wow, that's quite a camera bag you've got there."

"I'm a little bit of an amateur photographer. And I've never been to California before, so I was planning on taking lots of pictures. Our friends will be dozing off to slide shows of our honeymoon for the next three years."

Zack and Arianna both laughed, and Juliet caught Lassiter's eye as he turned away from the check-in desk. His mouth dropped open as he saw who she was talking to, but he quickly schooled his expression and made his way over to them.

"Colin, this is Arianna and Zack," she said, as he shook hands with them. "They just got engaged. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Wonderful," he echoed, putting his arm stiffly around Juliet's shoulders in a move she calculated as being only about 41% awkward. It was both weird and not weird, the feeling of him so close, the weight of his arm around her. Distracting in a way that she needed to put aside. "Are you here celebrating?"

"Partially," Copeland said, while at the same time Arianna rolled her eyes. "Zack has business contacts in town that he has to meet with this weekend, but I invited myself along because no way am I letting him spend a weekend here without me."

"I don't blame you! This place is amazing. I hope you don't have to work all weekend," Juliet said.

"I'm sure I'll find some time for my girl," Zachary said, hugging Arianna close. "But I do need to go now and make a few calls."

"O'H—" Lassiter started to say, and Juliet gently stepped on his foot. "—Honey…bunny…we should go find our villa. Don't you have to…"

"You're right," Juliet said, "it's time for me to call my mom. She's in Dayton, and the time difference messes with me," she told Arianna and Zachary cheerfully, "but I promised that I would call before she goes to her Friday night bingo game and tell her what the resort is like."

To her surprise, Arianna reached over and squeezed her hand. "I know you'll be busy this weekend," she said, with a sly look at Lassiter, "but if you have any time, I'd love it if we could get together for a drink or something. I need some advice from someone who's been through the whole wedding planning thing recently."

"We should have dinner one night," Zachary said. "Maybe tomorrow?"

Lassiter exchanged a look with Juliet before replying, keeping his tone casual. "Sure, why not?"

"Perfect!" Arianna said. "We could meet you at eight o'clock in the restaurant?"

"That would be great. We'll see you then," Juliet said. "Come on, cuddlebear, I have to call mom."

Lassiter had his phone out as soon as they walked into their villa. "I'll call Vick."

"Was Arianna mentioned in any of the information that the narcotics unit gave us?"

"No. We need to find out—"

His phone rang. "It's the Chief," he told Juliet as he answered.

"Detective, what part of 'don't engage Copeland' was confusing for you? Do you need for me to say it in simpler words? You weren't supposed to talk to him! One of the undercover detectives from Narcotics spotted you and nearly had a stroke."

He scowled at the phone and Juliet edged closer so that she could hear what was being said. "He approached us, Chief! He's with a woman who says that she's his fiancee. She overheard us checking into the honeymoon villa and wanted to talk to O'Hara about wedding crap."

"Put her on speakerphone," Juliet demanded, and after he did, she said "Chief, the woman's name is Arianna. She didn't give a last name. She wasn't mentioned in any of the files that Narcotics sent to us, but she says that she and Copeland are getting married in three months."

"We've got people gathering all the information we can on her now," Vick said, her voice tinny through the speakerphone. "I'll email you everything we find out."

"They invited us to have dinner with them tomorrow night," Lassiter said. "We told them yes, but if Narcotics wants us to back off, we'll make up an excuse and get out of it."

"I'll get back to you about that," Vick said. "For the time being, lay low and just do what you were sent there to do, okay?"

"Why would Copeland bring his girlfriend along for a meeting with a dangerous drug smuggler?" Juliet wondered as Lassiter put his phone away. "She seemed really sweet."

"Maybe she's not what she seems to be. She could be in on the whole thing. Hell, she could have made contact with you because she spotted us as cops right away."

"Do you think so? My first impression was that she was completely normal. I didn't think she was hiding anything."

"Don't let looks deceive you. How many perps have underestimated you because of how you look?" He turned away as he spoke, checking out their surroundings. "Right now, it doesn't matter what her role is. We need to get the camera set up and see who goes into that villa tonight."

Juliet was already opening the camera bag. "Where do you want to put it?" she asked, and they busied themselves for the next little while with the equipment, drawing the blinds and making decisions about how to arrange things so that they wouldn't be seen by Copeland or any of his people. Once the camera was up, they could watch the comings and goings out of the Copeland villa from the laptop Lassiter set up on the dining room table.

While he finished with that, Juliet investigated the villa. When she reached the bathroom, she stopped short in shock.

"Oh my god. Carlton! You have to see this!"

He was there in a flash, gun drawn. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Have you ever seen a bathroom like this before?" she asked in amazement. "Look at the size of that bathtub! We could throw a party in there."

Rolling his eyes, Lassiter holstered his weapon. "Sweet lady justice, O'Hara, I thought you'd found a body or something."

"Why would there be a body in the bathroom?" she wondered, but didn't wait for a reply. "I wish I had a shower like this at home. I would never get out of it."

"We need to get to work," he said brusquely, heading back to the laptop.

"It's okay to enjoy our surroundings!" she called after him, but when she checked out the bedroom, something about the ridiculously plush bedding made her feel fluttery and odd, so she shut the door on it and went back into the main room.

"Is everything working?" she asked.

"Yeah. Copeland and Arianna just went into their villa. No sign of anyone else yet."

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. The Chief called and told them to keep their dinner date with Copeland the next night; she wanted to exploit any connection they could make with him. They ordered in room service for dinner, Juliet mussing up her hair and throwing a robe on over her dress in order to answer the door, smiling giddily at the waiter, who gave her a knowing look and left quickly.

They took turns watching the monitor, but the most action either of them saw was a man they identified as one of Copeland's bodyguards coming outside for a smoke. During one of her breaks, Juliet took advantage of the shower she had been admiring earlier, and when she returned, both relaxed and energized, she found Lassiter with his sleeves rolled up, long fingers wrapped around a coffee cup, and she stopped in the doorway just to look at him for a minute, the fluttery feeling she had felt when she saw the bedroom earlier returning. _Whoa_, she thought, _what is this?_

She pushed the feeling down, down, down, and said "You should try out that shower. The water pressure is unbelievable."

"Maybe in a little while," he said, not looking away from the monitor. A short time later he declared that he was going to try and get a few hours sleep, and Juliet settled in with a cup of coffee and a perky mix on her iPod to help her stay alert.

A little after one a.m., there was finally some activity. Juliet found herself leaning forward as a man she recognized as Gregory Spindoza, one of Copeland's chief lieutenants, walked up in front of the villa. A few minutes later, Copeland came out, and Juliet texted Lieutenant Markos, the detective in charge of the Narcotics investigation to let him know about the meeting.

Copeland and Spindoza talked for only a few minutes before Copeland turned and walked back into the villa, Spindoza disappearing towards the beach, and Juliet texted again with the update, receiving a text in return confirming that they had a tail on Spindoza.

After that came nearly two more hours of mind-numbing boredom. By three o'clock she could barely keep her eyes open, and was grateful to hear sounds from the bedroom indicating that Lassiter was waking up.

He appeared a few minutes later, hair mussed and eyes bleary, and headed straight for the coffee pot; Juliet knew better than to try to say anything to him until he had downed at least half a cup.

He broke the silence first, nodding towards the monitor. "Anything?"

She told him about Spindoza, ending the brief report with a jaw-cracking yawn, and he waved her towards the bedroom. "Go get some sleep. I've got this."

She stumbled gratefully towards the bedroom, pausing just long enough to brush her teeth and pull on the pajamas she had brought. It was obvious what side of the bed Lassiter had slept on, and without thinking she climbed into the same spot, burrowing into sheets with a thread count higher than she could afford for her own bed, breathing in the comforting, familiar scent of her partner, and falling almost instantly asleep.

_"We have a jumper," Carlton said, leading her to the broken body sprawled facedown across the sidewalk._

_Shawn and Gus stood next to the body as well, eating popsicles. Shawn caught her watching him and grinned, the cherry-flavored treat turning his lips and teeth a gruesome red, making her look away hastily._

_Juliet glanced up at the nearest roof, high above the ground, and, for a split second, thought she saw a chair hovering off the edge. She blinked and it was gone, and she looked back down at the body in front of her, at the pool of blood spreading around the blond hair, and felt vaguely sick. She looked away and saw the ground looming at her from a terrifying distance, looked back and saw that Carlton had his hand on the shoulder of the dead woman and was about to roll her over._

_"Don't," Juliet tried to say, but her voice came out dry and cracked, and Lassiter didn't appear to hear her. "Please don't."_

_But he did, and a scream tried to claw its way out of her throat as she looked down at her own face, battered nearly beyond recognition._

_Lassiter shrugged and stood up. "A good cop wouldn't have let this happen to her," he said, and brushed past her as he walked away. Helpless and horrified, she looked to Shawn and Gus for support, but Gus had turned into Abigail and Shawn had his arm around her._

_"It's so sad," Abigail said, shaking her head as she looked down at Juliet._

_"I guess," Shawn said with a shrug. "Hey, you wanna see what's playing at the movies?"  
_

"O'Hara. Wake up. O'Hara!"

She felt something shaking her and opened her eyes to see Carlton sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand on her shoulder.

"That must have been some dream," he said gently. "I've been trying to wake you up for a few minutes now."

Her heart was still thudding, a panicky response to something that had only happened in her mind, and she could feel tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Hastily, she reached up to wipe them away and he stood up, stepping away from the bed and crossing his arms.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, struggling to sit up amid the tangled sheets, "how long have I been asleep? What's going on? Did something happen?"

"You've only been asleep for about five hours, and no, nothing has happened. Well, except that we have the morning off surveillance duty. Vick and Markos want us to get out of the room for a little while, let people see us, so that we don't seem suspicious. I spotted Dobson and Clemmons outside doing maintenance work, so apparently they'll be keeping an eye on things while we're out."

"Oh, okay," she said, her head still full of sleep as she sat up. "Oh, wait, does that mean that I really can go to the breakfast buffet?"

The corners of his mouth tilted up into a half-smile. "That's why I woke you up. I was afraid you might shoot me if I let you oversleep and miss the buffet."

She shuddered a little, remembering the dream. "I'm glad you woke me. I'll get dressed and we can go."

His gaze fell briefly down to what she had slept in, a t-shirt and a pair of pink pajama pants that featured kittens playing with yarn. She could hardly have been wearing anything less sexy or revealing, but she was suddenly very aware of his eyes on her, the bed she was sitting on, the memory of how his hand had felt on her shoulder, the warmth of him sitting beside her. She was struck with the insane urge to grab his arm and pull him down onto the bed with her.

He was backing away, turning towards the door. "Great. I'm just going to, uh…" he was out the door before she could hear what it was that he was in such a hurry to do. She hoped it was only her no-doubt terrifying bedhead that had made him retreat like his tail was on fire, and that he hadn't been able to tell what she'd been thinking. God. As soon as this assignment was over, she was going to go out on a date with the first man that asked, before she did something crazy and put her partnership with Carlton at risk.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: My love for cheesy, cliche-ridden tropes is even more obvious than usual here. Sorry-not-sorry, as the kids say today.

The breakfast buffet was everything that Juliet hoped it would be, except that it was also crowded.

"Cover me," she said to Lassiter. "I'm going in, and I'm not coming out until I have French toast."

"I've got your back," he assured her, amused.

There was almost an incident with a woman who tried to snatch the last piece of bacon away from Juliet, but Lassiter gave her his scariest cop glare and she backed off. As a reward, Juliet split the bacon with him after they sat down, and as he ate it along with his omelet as he looked around the restaurant.

"No sign of Copeland this morning, but isn't that Spindoza and Marcia Branson sitting beside the window?"

He kept his voice low and no one was sitting at the table closest to them, so it seemed safe enough to talk. She casually glanced around as she took a sip of coffee and nodded. "Yes. That's the top two people in Copeland's organization here. Something is definitely going down today."

"Did you see Detective Polaski picking up the trash outside the tiki bar? Man, I'm glad we didn't get that assignment."

She opened her mouth to agree, but shut up in a hurry as an older couple seated themselves at the next table over. She instead instigated pleasant chitchat about the weather, and Lassiter took her lead and asked her about which tourist sites she'd like to visit, which kept them occupied while they finished eating.

They had just stood, preparing to leave, when the woman at the next table said "Excuse me, but aren't you the couple staying in the honeymoon villa?"

Juliet—no, _Jessica_—beamed at her. "That's right! I'm Jessica and this is my husband, Colin. Wow, I'm never going to get used to saying that!"

"Oh honey, it'll be like second nature before you know it," the woman said cheerfully, "I'm Phyllis, and this is my husband, Doug. We're here celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary." Doug gave them an uninterested wave, barely looking up from his omelet.

"Thirty-five years! That's fantastic," Juliet said, linking her arm through Lassiter's, feeling him stiffen at the sudden contact. "Isn't that fantastic, honey?"

"Yes, fantastic," he agreed.

"Oh my, I imagine you were a gorgeous bride," Phyllis said, peering at Juliet through her eyeglasses. Turning her attention to Lassiter, she asked, "Do you tell her every day how beautiful she is?"

Juliet didn't bother trying to hide her grin as Lassiter turned pink. She let him stutter "I…uh…she…" before taking mercy on him.

"Of course he does," she said smoothly, and stretching up, she kissed him on the cheek, which did nothing to help the blushing situation.

"You two are just adorable!" Phyllis exclaimed. "Well, I know you must be eager to get back to your honeymoon. It's been such a pleasure to meet you."

Juliet said their goodbyes as Lassiter practically pulled her out of the restaurant. Once they were alone again, headed back to the villa, he said, "That was weird."

"No, it wasn't. She was just being friendly, and a little bit nosy."

"People should mind their own business," he grumbled, and she knew he was annoyed because he had gotten thrown off course by Phyllis's effusions. She sighed to herself; they were going to have to talk about this before their big dinner date that night.

Once they were back in the villa, he checked his voicemail while she checked email to see if there were any new instructions.

"Vick sent the file on Arianna," she called to him, and he came to read over her shoulder.

"Arianna Vasquez," he read aloud, "Santa Barbara native, twenty-four, grad student…what the hell is she doing with Copeland? He's twenty years older than her."

"Older men can be very appealing," Juliet said as she continued to read. "There's nothing here that suggests any connection to his organization."

"So, what? You think she's innocent?"

Juliet shrugged. "She's very pretty, apparently bright…maybe he really did just fall for her."

"I don't buy it. There's more to her than what's in this report."

"We'll see what we can find out from her at dinner tonight," Juliet said. "Speaking of which…we have to talk."

"About what?" he asked, not meeting her eyes.

"You're a terrible liar, Carlton. Normally, I find that a very admirable trait, but you're going to have to overcome it for this case."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lassiter grumped.

"Yes you do. You get visibly uncomfortable every time that I, well, act like a newlywed."

He was mad now, scowling at her fiercely. "Don't be ridiculous, O'Hara. Everything went fine this morning."

"Really?" she asked skeptically. "We're supposed to be in love. If you get flustered every time I touch you, Copeland is going to get suspicious."

"I don't get flustered! What the hell does that even mean? You're imagining things."

"Is that right?" she asked, and edged right up into his personal space, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. She put a hand against his chest, and felt him tense; she had the impression that he was forcing himself not to bolt.

"Relax," she said, feeling like she was gentling a wild animal. "Think of it like one of your reenactments. I know you're comfortable with doing that. This is just another form of acting."

He started to take a step back, but she grabbed onto his shirt and didn't let go, and he didn't move any further. "The reenactments aren't acting," he said weakly. "They're about recreating pivotal moments in history."

"You're going to have to explain to me sometime how that's different from acting. Come on Carlton, this shouldn't be so weird. We've been partners for years. It's not like we never touch each other."

He took an impatient breath; she could feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand. "Stop worrying so much, O'Hara. As long as you can bullshit your way through a conversation about wedding planning with Arianna, I can pretend to be all lovey-dovey with you for one night."

"Can you?" she challenged, and he surprised her by covering the hand holding onto his shirt with his own hand and looking her right in the eye. Something low in her belly did an excited flip-flop.

"Yes," he said firmly, and he might have also said "it's going to be fine," but she had stopped listening because her brain was suddenly very busy processing just how big his hand was over hers, wide palm and long fingers, and she was finding it very difficult to focus on anything else.

"O'Hara?" he asked, his hand dropping away from hers, and she realized that he was waiting for a response from her.

"Okay," she said, releasing her grip on his shirt and giving him a friendly pat. "Good. I'm glad we talked about this. You know, if it would help, you can pretend I'm someone else."

"Right," he said distractedly. "Um, you can stop touching me now."

She looked down to see that her friendly pat had turned into something that could only be described as petting. She stepped away from him so fast that she almost stumbled.

"We should get back to work," he said, not looking at her.

"Yes," she agreed, relieved that he wasn't going to comment on her apparently increasing insanity. Maybe the Chief was right and she let herself get too immersed in her undercover roles.

She returned to watching the camera feed from outside of Copeland's villa after texting Chief Vick and Lieutenant Markos to let them know that she and Lassiter were back on the job. Lassiter disappeared into the bedroom and came out a few minutes later carrying a file.

"What's that?"

"It's everything we have on the Catrow murder so far. I thought we could take turns going over it again this afternoon, see if we can find anything we missed before the Chief calls Spencer in."

"You just don't want Shawn to solve it before we can," she said.

"Do you?" he asked, as he sat down across from her and spread the contents of the file out on the table.

"All I want is for the murderer to be brought to justice," she said primly, and he shot her an exasperated look. "It's not a contest, Carlton! But I admit, it would be satisfying to close the case ourselves. So, are you still looking at the brother for it? He has an alibi."

"It's not airtight. There's at least fifteen minutes—"

"Carlton," she interrupted, "something's going on at Copeland's."

He came over to look over her shoulder at the monitor, where they could see a group of four men walking up the front steps of the Copeland villa. "That's Alberto Gomez," he said, pointing at the man in the center of the group. "Call Markos and tell him that the cartel is here."

After that came a lot more waiting. After the men disappeared into the villa, nothing much happened. After another hour of watching the monitor, Juliet couldn't stifle a yawn.

"I always thought being involved in an international drug sting would be more exciting," Lassiter said glumly, as he motioned for her to get up and switch places with him.

"I know in theory that I should be glad that we're not in a shoot-out with a drug cartel, but somehow I'm still a little disappointed," she said, as she started looking through the Catrow file.

"There's still time," Lassiter said. "I haven't given up hope yet."

"Do you think Copeland will even show for dinner tonight? Why would he waste time with a couple of strangers from Ohio when he obviously has business to attend to?"

"I don't know. If the fiancee's for real, he might be trying to keep up some sort of appearance of normality for her. I thought at first that he might have made us as cops, but if he had…"

"He would have called off the meeting with Gomez," Juliet said, finishing his thought. She pulled a statement out of the file that she was studying, frowning. "Hey, let's call Simon Catrow's secretary in for questioning again on Monday. The timestamp on the security footage doesn't coincide with when she said he left the office."

"Good catch, O'Hara," he said, pleased, then focused on the monitor again. "Arianna's leaving the villa."

Juliet came around to see Arianna in a bikini and sheer cover-up, carrying a small tote bag and walking in the direction of the pool. "I think she's just going sunbathing. If she's not involved at all, it makes sense that Copeland would want her clear of the villa now that his 'business associates' have arrived."

"We still don't know that she's not a part of this," he reminded her, and she shrugged.

"It's just a feeling," she said. "I think she's an innocent bystander."

"We'll see," he said, and she wanted to sigh because he was always so suspicious of everyone, but instead she went back to work on the Catrow file.

The rest of the afternoon crawled by. Juliet found a baseball game for them to listen to on the radio, and painted her nails while Lassiter watched the monitor and made fun of her nail polish ("O'Hara, you should be embarrassed to own anything called Pretty Pretty Pink Princess." "I like the color!" she said defensively, before adding with a smirk "and I feel like a pretty princess when I wear it," which made him roll his eyes.). When they switched again, he went to take a shower while she stared at the screen in front of her and grew increasingly restless, as the most exciting thing to happen was Arianna coming back from the pool.

When she heard the bathroom door open, she turned fractionally in her chair to tell him that Arianna was back – a boring update was still an update – only to catch a glimpse of him going from the bathroom to the bedroom, dressed but with his shirt still unbuttoned and she turned quickly back to the monitor, looking down to see that her hands were clenched into fists, her pretty pink princess nails digging into her palms over nothing more than a glimpse of pale skin and dark hair.

Maybe she should go back to therapy. It was clear that she was losing her mind.

When he came back, she went to take a shower herself and change for dinner, pleased that she had brought a dress appropriate for the resort's fanciest restaurant.

Lassiter wasn't as impressed. "How are you going to wear your holster with that thing?" he asked, taking one look at the backless halter dress and turning back to the monitor.

"I already am," she said smugly, and when he looked at her again, she gestured at her leg. "Thigh holster."

His mouth tightened, like he was biting back something he wanted to say, but all he did was shut down the laptop and stand up.

More than anything they had done so far on this assignment, this felt couple-y. Like a date.

"I don't know how you walk in those things," Lassiter said, glancing down at her high-heeled sandals.

"Practice," she replied absently, thinking about how even with her in heels, Carlton was taller. Of course she had always known he was tall, but she suddenly felt very _aware_ of it. How had she managed to suppress her awareness for so long?

They spotted Copeland and Arianna as soon as they walked into the restaurant and spent the next few minutes in idle chitchat about the menu and the wine selection until they ordered.

"So Jessica," Arianna said after the waiter had departed with their orders, "I hope you don't mind if I jump right into asking you questions, but I really want to pick your brain. Did you use a wedding planner or did you do it all yourself?"

Juliet began spinning out the wedding details she had made up for Jessica and Colin – score one for overplanning – while listening just enough to Carlton and Copeland's conversation to know that they were discussing the options for chartering a boat and going deep-sea fishing. Harmless small talk. She felt a twinge of relief that Lassiter wasn't attempting to interrogate the man in an obvious way – she had nothing but respect for her partner's skills, but he sometimes lacked subtletly. She was pleased too that he had apparently gotten over his skittishness over making physical contact with her; he didn't flinch at all when she squeezed his hand while talking about the music they had danced to at their completely imaginary wedding.

They had just finished their entrees, and Juliet was running out of things to say about bands vs. DJs and wondering if this entire thing had been a waste of time, when Copeland's phone rang.

"So sorry," he apologized as he pulled it out of his jacket pocket, "but this is technically a working weekend for me. Excuse me." He stepped away from the table to take the call, and Juliet squeezed Lassiter's hand before the expression of pure frustration on his face could turn into a comment.

Arianna rolled her eyes as she watched her fiancé retreat. "I have to apologize for Zack. He never stops working."

"What kind of work does he do?" Lassiter asked.

"He's a business consultant?" Arianna said uncertainly. "I'll be honest, I don't even know exactly what that means. He told me that he helps companies find the most cost-effective methods to run. I'm an art major. The business talk is lost on me."

"How did you and he meet?" Juliet asked, and Arianna smiled.

"We go to the same coffee shop. I was there every morning working on my thesis, and he was there working on some kind of business plan, and one day he bought me a Chai and we started talking."

"That's so sweet!" Juliet enthused, keeping an eye on Copeland, who was in the restaurant lobby pacing back and forth as he spoke on the phone. "How long have you been dating?"

"Two months. I know what you're thinking, it's kind of a fast engagement, but I just knew he was the one. I'm sure you know what that's like."

_Not so much_, Juliet thought, but she only smiled and leaned her head against Lassiter's shoulder. "I know exactly what you mean," she lied, as Copeland rejoined them at the table.

"I'm so sorry," he said, "but I have to cut my evening short. Business before pleasure, I'm afraid."

"I hope it's nothing too serious," Lassiter said.

"Oh no, not at all, just a client who only likes to deal with me. Ari, I'll be late, so don't wait up."

He kissed Arianna on the forehead, said goodbye to Lassiter and Juliet, and left, leaving the two detectives to watch him go in complete frustration.

Lassiter excused himself to go to the restroom, which Juliet knew meant he was going to contact Vick and Markos to let them know that Copeland was on the move.

"Don't worry, I won't keep you guys any longer," Arianna said, Juliet forced herself to stop wondering what Copeland was up to and focus on the woman sitting across from her.

"What do you mean? We've had a lovely night."

"Jessica, I've noticed that you and Colin have barely left the villa since you got here, and I've seen the way he's been looking at you all night. I know you two would rather be alone. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me some advice tonight, though."

How does Carlton look at me? Juliet wondered, but filed that away for another time as Arianna stood up to leave, just as Carlton came back to the table.

"I'm going to let you and Jessica enjoy the rest of your evening," Arianna said, giving him a quick hug and taking off before Lassiter could do much more than say a confused goodbye. He dropped into the chair beside Juliet and sighed.

"I never imagined that dinner with a known criminal syndicate boss could be so goddamned boring. That was a complete waste of time."

"I'm pretty sure that I spent half an hour talking about flower bouquets. If I never think about orchids again, it will be too soon. And also –" she broke off as she saw Copeland's chief lieutenant leaving the bar. "Hey, isn't that Spindoza? He must be going to meet up with Copeland, right?"

"Let's follow him and find out," Lassiter said as he stood, and she followed him, thrilled to have something to do that wasn't staring at a monitor or pretending to be a newlywed.

They trailed him as he walked away from the villas, towards the beach, keeping a healthy distance away from him. Juliet tucked her hand into the crook of Lassiter's arm so that if anyone were to see them, they would look like lovers out for a moonlight stroll.

"Where the hell is he going?" Lassiter whispered, and she shook her head.

Spindoza slowed as he reached a small building on the beach, and Juliet frowned as she recognized it as being the surfboard rental shop, which was closed for the night.

"He's meeting someone inside," Lassiter said. "Come on, let's get closer."

Through the small window on the side of the building, Juliet could see two other figures along with Spindoza, and she blinked in surprise as she recognized them.

"Is that the couple from this morning?" Lassiter asked in disbelief.

"Phyllis and Doug," Juliet confirmed, keeping her voice as low as his. It must not have been low enough though, because Spindoza looked towards the window and headed for the door.

Lassiter pulled her silently around to the back of the building, looking for somewhere to hide, but around them was only the beach. So, Juliet did the only thing she could think to do to maintain their cover, which was push Lassiter against the back of the building, tilt her face up towards his, her high heels giving her just the perfect amount of height, and kiss him.

Lassiter tensed up immediately at the first touch of her lips against his, and would have backed away if she hadn't had him up against a wall.

"O'Hara," he muttered against her mouth, "this is against regulation."

"We're undercover," she whispered back, "and you're going to blow it if you don't play along."

He complied, but only barely; he pressed his closed lips against hers and stood perfectly still, like he was terrified of otherwise moving. Juliet opened her eyes and chanced a look over to see Spindoza coming around the corner, stopping short at the sight of them, his head cocked in confusion.

"Lassiter," she hissed in frustration, hoping that Spindoza was still far enough away that he couldn't make out what she was saying and feeling Carlton start at the flutter of her lips against his, "You do know how to kiss don't you? Kiss me!"

He made a sound of pure irritation, and then, before she could process exactly what was happening, one of his hands was in her hair and the other was spread across her back, warm and sure against her bare skin, and he was kissing her, his mouth slightly rough on hers, and Juliet felt her stomach drop straight down to her toes. All she could do was dig her fingers into the nape of his neck and kiss him back. Time seemed to slow down as he nipped lightly at her mouth, his tongue flicking across her lips, his thumb tracing across the shell of her ear and down her jaw. She couldn't help it – she moved her hands up to his face, wanting to keep him exactly where he was as long as possible, pressing herself against him shamelessly. When he finally pulled away, she could only stare at him in shock, seeing her own arousal mirrored back to her in his dilated eyes and flushed cheeks.

"He's gone," Lassiter said softly, and for one disorienting moment she had no idea who he was talking about, until she remembered oh yeah, the case. "I know how to kiss, O'Hara," he added in a petulant mutter as he turned to see if he could hear what Spindoza was saying to the others.

"Duly noted," Juliet said breathlessly, grateful that he had his back to her now so that he couldn't see that she had to put her hand against the wall in order to stay upright, and that she was literally trembling all over, a fact she endeavored to ignore because they still had work to do. She crept up behind him, in time to see Phyllis and Doug come out of the surf shop.

"What's wrong?" Phyllis asked, the folksy friendliness she had evinced at breakfast gone.

"It's just the lovebirds," Spindoza said, and Doug scowled.

"What are they doing here?"

"They looked like they were about two minutes away from going at it on the beach," Spindoza said.

"I don't like it, them being this close," Doug said, and Lassiter gave her a quick look before slinging an arm over her shoulders and pulling her along, away from the surf shop, like they really were doing nothing more than taking a romantic walk along the beach.

They had only gotten a few feet away when they heard Doug say, "Hey, wait a minute."

Juliet could feel Lassiter tense against her, and she dropped her hand to her side, next to the holster on her thigh as they turned to face Doug, Carlton's arm still wrapped loosely around her.

"Is something wrong?" Lassiter asked, his voice all friendly concern.

"No, no," Doug said, but his hand was sliding under his jacket and Juliet dropped the pretense, pulling out her gun.

"SBPD! Let me see your hands!" she snapped, as Lassiter pulled his gun as well and Doug stopped moving, his hand pushing his jacket back enough that she could see the holster underneath.

Phyllis, who was standing a foot or two behind Doug, started laughing. "SPBD? You're local cops?"

"Don't move!" Lassiter ordered, as Phyllis started to reach for her purse.

"I'm just reaching for my ID," she said soothingly, raising her hands. "Doug and I are DEA."

"Set your purse on the ground and kick it over to me," Juliet ordered, and when Phyllis did, she picked it up and opened it, pulling out an ID badge that identified Phyllis as being Sylvia Brownstein of the DEA.

"Christ," Lassiter grumbled when she showed him the badge, lowering his gun, "why the hell didn't we know that the DEA was here?"

"We didn't know SBPD was here," Doug countered.

"Spindoza's working with you?" Juliet asked.

"That's right," Phyllis said, "and I have to tell you, this place is swarming with agents ready to take Copeland and Gomez down."

"Great," Lassiter said, pulling out his phone to call Chief Vick, "this whole operation has been completely pointless."

Juliet nodded in agreement, sharing his frustration, but remembering how he had kissed her, she thought that maybe it hadn't been _completely_ pointless.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: Big, huge apologies for taking so long to get this chapter posted! I had a rough draft due for the Psych Casefic Challenge that needed work before I could come back to this, but I never intended to neglect this story for so long. Many, many thanks to those of you reading this, and especially those who have left comments. I appreciate every single one._

They weren't going to talk about it.

On this particular point, Lassiter was very, very certain. The one time in the few days since that stupid, useless, idiotic assignment that O'Hara had said "Carlton, about what happened the other…" he had interrupted her to complain – again – about the shameful lack of communication between the various law enforcement agencies. O'Hara had pursed her lips together in a tight little bow, clearly disapproving of his unwillingness to broach the topic, but she had dropped it, at least for the time being.

He didn't need to talk about it. He sincerely wished that there was a way to scrub it from his memory, so that he could never think about it again.

The Copeland investigation had turned into a massive clusterfuck. The DEA had managed to bring in Gomez, the Columbian connection, but somehow in the confusion caused by the two uncoordinated agencies, Copeland and Arianna had disappeared. Arianna's role was still unclear – everything they had turned up on her suggested that she was exactly what she claimed to be, a grad student engaged to a local businessman.

Because Lassiter and O'Hara had only been brought in on the case in the first place to assist the Narcotics unit, it wasn't their case anymore, though Juliet had expressed some concern for Arianna. But on Monday, they were back at work on the Catrow murder, with Chief Vick agreeing to let them follow up on their new leads before she called in Spencer and Guster.

Truthfully, Lassiter almost wouldn't have minded if Psych had been called in; when Spencer was in the room putting on his dog-and-pony show (fortunately, so far, without any actual dogs or ponies), it was hard to pay attention to anything else. He would have welcomed the distraction, anything to stop him from thinking about the problem that had been plaguing him for the past few months.

The problem being that he was in love with his partner.

He wasn't exactly certain for how long he had felt that way; it had crept up on him, over years of long hours and bad coffee and days and weeks of routine spiked with sudden danger. What he did know was that it had hit him like a ton of bricks as he had stood on that clock tower in the bright morning sun, holding her while she cried. He had tried to deny it, tried to convince himself that he was caught up in the emotions of the moment, but months later he still felt the same way.

It scared him so much that he had even gone to a therapist – someone not affiliated with the station, because he didn't want anyone with the power to influence Chief Vick to know – but his crappy insurance only paid for three sessions, so it hadn't done him much good (strangely, the only person he had shared that little tidbit of information with was Guster, who thankfully had apparently not told anyone else).

That was fine, though, he told himself. His feelings for her didn't change anything; she was still his partner, and his friend. She could never know, obviously. The last thing he wanted was for either of them to be embarrassed by his inconvenient, unmanageable feelings for her.

Of course, it was a lot easier to ignore the problem when he wasn't on some Christ-forsaken assignment pretending to be married to her. Two days of her holding his hand and calling him her husband and looking up at him with bright, uncomplicated smiles that made him feel like he had goddamned sunshine coming out of his chest, and despite all of that he thought he had done a pretty good job of keeping a professional demeanor right up until she kissed him.

He knew that for Juliet, it wasn't a real kiss. It didn't mean anything, aside from being a way to maintain their cover. The fact that she had responded to it he could put down to her being invested in her role, and also maybe somewhat because he had taken her by surprise by actually kissing her. He shouldn't have done that, no matter that she had goaded him into it. He usually had more self-control than that. But after two days of touching and living in close quarters and the small intimacies that came with that, he hadn't been able to help himself. He felt lucky that she was still speaking to him at all; he wouldn't have blamed her for going to Chief Vick and saying that she couldn't work with someone who stuck his tongue halfway down her throat in the middle of an undercover assignment.

Since she appeared willing to forgive, and, hopefully, forget, he just wanted things to go back to normal. He could go back to quietly and efficiently attempting to suppress his feelings for her, and she could go back to her complete ignorance of those feelings.

Although…she had been sending him weird signals for the past few days. Looking at him when she thought he wasn't paying attention, touching him even when they were alone. If she had been anyone else – and if he had possessed an optimistic bone in his body – he would almost have thought that she was interested in him.

That, however, wasn't possible. She was merely immersed in her role, and he needed to get his head out of his ass.

Part of getting back to normal was going back to work, and that's what he was glad to do now, leaning against the wall of the interrogation room, playing Mildly Threatening Cop to O'Hara's Sympathetic Cop, as she handed a tissue to Bianca Calhoun, who had been Simon Catrow's secretary until he had been murdered. Bianca was sobbing quietly as she confessed to O'Hara that she had lied about Simon's schedule on the day of his death at the behest of Simon's brother Harold, whom she claimed to be in love with.

"But Harold would never have hurt Simon!" Bianca wailed, and Lassiter gave a thinly veiled snort of disbelief that only made her cry harder. What was with these people who thought that loving someone meant that they were incapable of doing anything bad?

"Of course not," O'Hara soothed, "but, well, he was Simon's sole heir, wasn't he?"

Bianca faltered slightly. "Yes, but –"

"And he asked you to lie for him," Juliet continued in her gently relentless way. "Bianca, we could arrest you for obstruction of justice."

Lassiter winced as this only made Bianca cry harder. O'Hara leaned forward, nothing but earnest concern in her demeanor. "We don't want to do that. We understand how much you love Harold, and how much you believe in his innocence. But we can't find out what really happened to Simon if you lie to us. And doesn't Simon deserve to have some justice?"

Bianca, sniffled, nodded, blew her nose, and started talking haltingly about how she had overheard Harold and Simon arguing over money a few times, and how Harold had begged her to tell the police that Simon had left his office during the time frame when Harold had an airtight alibi, because, he had explained to her, he didn't want the cops to waste time suspecting him while the real killer went free.

_Love makes idiots out of people_, Lassiter thought, as he watched Bianca slowly come to grips with the fact that her boyfriend had almost certainly murdered her boss.

Later, after they had made the arrest and gotten the confession from Harold Catrow, Lassiter watched surreptitiously as Juliet worked at her computer, typing away on the report. They had already put in a nearly thirteen hour day, and he could tell that she was exhausted by the uncharacteristic slump of her shoulders.

"You can finish that tomorrow," he told her. "Go home, O'Hara."

"I'm almost done," she said, reaching for the mug of what had to be cold coffee sitting on her desk. "You go ahead. I'll see you in the morning."

He should leave. She was a fully capable adult – hell, she was probably more of a capable adult than he was – and if she said that she wanted to keep working, then he should let her alone to do exactly that. But he had a feeling that she was continuing to work because she didn't want to go home.

The image of her curled up asleep in the enormous bed at the resort, the dark gold of her hair spilling across the pillow, had remained with him for the past few days. Not, he assured himself (only partially successfully), for prurient reasons. She had been sleeping deeply, yes, but her brow had been furrowed with tension and her hands balled into fists. She had as much as said the day before that that she didn't sleep well. Nightmares, he assumed, and who wouldn't have nightmares after what she had been through? He had had a few himself since the clock tower, and he wasn't the one who had been staring down at impending death.

"Wrap it up, O'Hara," he said gruffly. "I'm starving, and I don't want to eat alone."

She didn't pause in her typing. "Thanks, but I want to spend a little more time on this."

"I know for a fact that you haven't eaten anything since lunch," he persisted, "and that was nearly seven hours ago. You can always come back here and work after you eat."

Finally, she looked up at him. "I guess I am a little hungry," she admitted. "A grilled cheese from Cora's would be good."

"Come on," he said, relieved that he wouldn't have to push any harder. A tiny, niggling voice of worry in the back of his mind suggested that he should be trying to avoid spending any off-the-clock time with her, but he shut it down. He was only looking out for the well-being of his partner, which he felt was something any good cop should do.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the diner it was easier to see how tired she was; O'Hara was always lovely, but he could see how pale she was and the circles under her eyes that she tried to conceal with make-up. While they waited on their food to arrive, she picked at a napkin, and he watched with somewhat morbid fascination as she decimated it into tiny scraps of paper.

"Are you thinking about the case?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Bianca reminds me a little of my mom," she said, surprising him.

"How so?"

She shrugged, looking down at the remains of the napkin. "Her complete willingness to believe in lies from someone she loves. Not that Frank ever killed anyone," she added hastily, "he's just a two-bit conman. But the way Bianca had to be walked up to the truth reminds me of my aunt doing the same thing for my mom. I hated Aunt Lucy for that at the time. I didn't want to believe it either."

"You were a kid. We all want to believe the best of our dads when we're kids," Lassiter said, thinking of his own no-good drunk of a father.

"Yeah. God!" she laughed suddenly, scooping up the remains of the napkin into her hand and squeezing them into a tight ball, "what a depressing subject. Let's talk about something else. Have Dobson and Miller made any progress on the diner robbery?"

They talked about open cases and office gossip while they ate, and he was pleased to see her practically inhale the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup she had ordered. Afterwards, she leaned back in the booth and yawned.

"Maybe I will finish that report in the morning. I think I'm about done in for the day."

"Good idea," he said blandly, and she kicked him lightly under the table.

"Don't think that I don't know that getting me to leave for the day was your nefarious plan all along."

"It's purely selfish, O'Hara," he assured her. "I don't want to have to correct all the mistakes you'll make if you're too tired to think straight. And Chief Vick will make you pay for your laptop if you ruin it by falling asleep and drooling on it."

"I don't drool," she said primly.

"Please. I've seen evidence to the contrary. If you'd like, I can give you a comprehensive list. There was the stakeout two years ago in the warehouse district –"

"That won't be necessary," she interrupted, grinning a little. "If you'll take me back to my car, I promise to go home and only drool on my own pillow."

As they paid for their food at the counter, he said "We don't have to go back to the station. I can take you and home and pick you up in the morning." That little voice in his head that protested spending off-duty time with O'Hara started shrieking at this, but he stomped ruthlessly on it. He had driven her home from work dozens of time over the years. It didn't mean anything.

She hesitated, but yawned again and threw up her hands in defeat. "Okay, I'll take advantage of your chauffeuring services. Take me home, Jeeves!"

She was quiet on the drive to her house, her head tilted back on the car seat like she was already dozing off. Watching her from the corner of his eye, he could see the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the exposed white column of her throat. When he realized that he was idly wondering what it would be like to press a kiss against the hollow of that throat, he forced himself to look only at the road and to think about unsexy things, like crime statistics for the neighborhood he was driving through and the recent conversation he had had with McNab about the definition of "civil war" (Buzz assumed that calling it civil meant that all the soldiers had to be polite to each other). By the time he parked in front of her house, he thought he had himself back under control.

Or maybe not, he realized, as he shook her awake and she opened her sleepy blue eyes to him, looking confused at first and then giving him a small smile, and he had to quash the desire to lean over and kiss her. "Did I sleep all the way home? I'm sorry Carlton, I must be more tired than I realized."

"Go get some rest, O'Hara," he said, while thinking _please get out of my car before I do something stupid_. "I'll pick you up at 8:00 in the morning."

"Okay," she agreed softly, but didn't move. His hand was still on her shoulder, and he could feel how warm her skin was underneath her blouse, and the only thought in his head was that she was beautiful and that he wanted her so much he ached with it.

"Carlton," she whispered, and he realized with horror that he was leaning towards her, like he was going to…like he was about to…he jerked away from her violently, putting both hands on the steering wheel and squeezing it hard.

"Good night, O'Hara," he said his voice strangled and his meaning clear, and he didn't look at her again as she got out of the car and shut the door, and didn't see that she stood on the sidewalk staring after him as he drove away.

Juliet hadn't been surprised when Carlton shut down her one and only attempt to talk about the kiss they had shared; the entire situation was awkward and embarrassing and it was exactly like him to pretend that it had never happened. Honestly, she had been relieved that he wasn't angry at her for taking advantage of him while they were undercover. She wouldn't have much blamed him if he hadn't wanted to work anymore with a partner who couldn't seem to keep her hands off of him lately and who had forced him into kissing her in order to maintain their cover.

At least, she had felt that way until tonight, when she had been certain that he had been about to kiss her, right there in the front seat of their police-issued Crown Vic, a spot she had never before considered the least bit romantic.

She had gone into her house in a daze, no longer the least bit tired. It was at times like this that she most missed her cats; mostly for the companionship and affection they had provided, but also for the routine she would have had to go through after a long day away: feeding them, petting them, giving them fresh water and cleaning their litter box. Mindless but meaningful tasks that would have forced her to slow down and think about something other than her partner for a few minutes.

As it was, she found herself standing in her living room, the strap of her purse still in her hand and her jacket still slung over her arm, thinking about how he had looked at her in the car, like he was _starving_. For her.

She had been so certain that he didn't think about her that way. She was his partner, and Carlton Lassiter was the epitome of professionalism. Except…well, he had slept with his previous partner. She remembered, in the very early days of their partnership, telling him that she didn't believe in workplace romances, and it made her want to squirm with embarrassment now, at how young she'd been. Not that her policy on dating coworkers had been wrong, just that she hadn't understood at the time that the partnership that she and Carlton had been embarking on would be more meaningful and more intimate than any romantic relationship she'd ever had.

But not as intimate as he'd been with the partner he'd had before her. Which brought her around to thinking about the kiss on the beach again, about his hands on her face, in her hair, his body pressed against hers, the memory of it making her flush all over. God_damn_ that had felt good. In the days since, she had tried to suppress the memory, but with her newfound certainty that he wanted her as much as she wanted him, she didn't bother.

The question now was what to do about it. She knew that if she left it up to him, he would repress and ignore until the end of time if necessary, or, more likely, until they both got fed up with each other. There was no one better than Carlton at taking action in the field, but she knew that when it came to matters dealing with the heart, she was going to have to take the lead. She resented him a little for that, for being such a stereotypical _guy_ and making her do the emotional heavy lifting, but when she thought about Victoria and Lucinda she considered that maybe he had good reason to wall himself off.

Right now though, it was nearly midnight, and she had to work the next day. Maybe the best thing to do would be to try not to think about it, get some sleep, and in general, exercise caution. She could gage the temperature of his mood the next day and decide what to do from there.

After spending a very short amount of time with Lassiter the next day, what she most wanted to do was sock him in the nose. He was in an epically bad temper from the moment she got into his car that morning, and she knew the reason was because he was trying to put some distance between them after the night before, but she wasn't going to let it work. Probably.

The thing was, he was mostly taking out his temper on another people, not on Juliet. Her, he seemed to be trying to ignore. Other than a curt "good morning" and a request for a file she had in her desk, he hadn't spoken to her all day except to respond when she asked him a direct question. But even before lunch he had snapped at a witness to a hit-and-run (necessitating that Juliet go behind him and apologize), nearly reduced Detective Dobson to tears (a discomfiting sight that Juliet was certain would haunt her in her dreams), and terrified a robbery suspect into a confession merely by glaring at him (okay, there was at least one upside to his mood).

The quick confession should have put him in a better mood, but he remained grouchy. They spent most of the afternoon at their respective desks, with him so blatantly trying to avoid her that one point he sent McNab over to ask her a question that he could easily have asked her himself.

Clearly, this could not stand.

Because they had worked over the weekend as well as the long shift the day before, Chief Vick sent them home early, no doubt because she was as tired as everyone else of Lassiter growling at anyone who came near him. Juliet was grateful for the afternoon and evening off, hoping that it would give her time to clear her head. She was able to go to a krav maga class, and then swim a few laps in the pool at the gym, working off some of her tension, before going home and putting together a salad for dinner. And then she sat down with a glass of wine to think.

If she did nothing, things might go back to normal in a week or two, though there would probably always be residual tension between them for all the things unsaid. Still, it wasn't a completely unappealing scenario. Her partnership with Lassiter was the most important relationship in her life, and what she was considering would throw it into complete upheaval. Did she really want that?

She thought maybe she did. She needed to be careful though, needed to make certain that she was thinking rationally about this. With that in mind, she pulled out a notebook and a pen and started a "Pros" and "Cons" list for pursuing a relationship with Carlton.

Cons  
1\. HE IS YOUR PARTNER.  
She grabbed a pink highlighter and went over it a few times. If she screwed up her partnership with Carlton to go after something that would never work and that she only wanted because she was feeling vulnerable or lonely, she would never forgive herself.

2\. He's rude, moody, arrogant  
All true enough, with Exhibit A being today. However, as much as he might hate to hear it, he had mellowed over the years, so that days like today were the exception rather than the rule. And she prided herself on having learned how to handle him when he was being difficult.

3\. He's a workaholic.  
Yeah, well, so was she.

4\. The squirrel thing.  
Yes, okay, that was a little disturbing.

5\. Shawn.  
This one was tricky, because it brought up a lot of uncertainty in her. She and Shawn had spent so much time dancing around each other, and she had spent so long convinced that they were meant to be together, but when she had come back to work after Yin, it was like a switch had been flipped. She wasn't interested anymore.

When they had teamed up to work on the Desiree Blake murder investigation, that feeling had been confirmed. As partners, they sucked. For heaven's sake, even Gus and Lassiter, a pairing that should not work at all, seemed to make a more effective team than she and Shawn did. She spent most of the investigation being either irritated or baffled by him. At the end of it, she realized that while she would always have a great deal of affection for Shawn, whatever had been between them before, the _zing_ that had existed, was gone. It was a little embarrassing now to look back at the past year and remember how much she had pined for Shawn while he was dating Abigail. Given her current fixation on Lassiter, she wondered if she was subconsciously sabotaging herself by wanting men that were unavailable to her.

No, she refused to believe that was true. What she was feeling now for Carlton had been building for a long time. It felt like a natural outgrowth of their partnership. Like, the first couple of years had been about them getting to know and trust each other, and the next couple of years had been about them becoming the kind of team that had them finishing each other's sentences and anticipating each other's actions in the field. And now…now she realized that she was interested in putting that teamwork to the test in other ways.

6\. He's your partner, dammit.  
Because that was what it all came back to; if the roles they had played over the past weekend had been real, if she really was an elementary school teacher and Carlton an insurance auditor, and she felt this way about him, there would be no question that she would ask him out, try to start a relationship. If she tried to do that here, though, she was terrified that she might burn everything they had worked so hard to build together to the ground.

Okay, enough of that. Time to put some things in the "Pro" column, before she lost her nerve completely.

1\. He always has my back  
She stopped and looked at the words; she had never really thought before about how true this was. The past year had been…well, Juliet was an optimist, and she preferred to look on the bright side of things, but the past year had dealt her a few blows. There was discovering that Ewan was not the hero she thought he was. There was the thing with Scott; not that she had ever seriously thought that they would end up living happily ever after, but it was still a little sad to give up that fantasy for good. And of course there was Yin, who was still out there somewhere.

Through all of those situations, Carlton had been the person by her side. He was the one who went with her to see Ewan off on the prison bus (for all the good that had done). He was the one giving her (somewhat surprisingly) good advice while she dealt with the upheaval of having Scott back in her life. And he was the one who had pushed everyone else away so that she could fall apart in private on the clock tower.

2\. I trust him completely

Having grown up with Frank O'Hara's broken promises, trust wasn't something she took lightly. Lassiter never lied to her, and her imagination wasn't vivid enough to come up with a scenario in which he'd betray her.

There was also the flip side of the equation to consider, the fact that he trusted her as much as she did him, a daunting realization since trust was such a hard-won commodity from him.

3\. The way he kissed me

A shallow addition to her list? Maybe. That did not make it any less true. That libido of hers that had taken an extended vacation after the clock tower had returned from Maui or wherever it had been off sunning itself all rested up and raring to go.

4\. I think I might be in love with him

She stopped again, putting down her pen and notebook to go to the kitchen and pour herself another glass of wine. When had this happened? Thinking back, she wasn't sure. Maybe the more relevant question was to wonder _why_ this had happened. Because if this was some sort of reaction to having experienced trauma…if the main reason she was attracted to Carlton was because he made her feel safe, then it would be terribly unfair of her to pursue anything more.

She drank her wine and thought about the kiss on the beach again, which hadn't felt safe at all. What she was considering would upend everything about her life right now – there was no chance that Vick would allow them to remain partners if they got personally involved, and after what had happened with Detective Barry, equally no chance that Carlton would think it a good idea to keep it a secret.

There was nothing safe about any of this.

Restlessness thrummed under her skin as she paced around the room. What if her feelings were temporary? What if she was misreading his interest? What if her reactions to kissing him had been fueled by the adrenaline of the moment and weren't real? What if she was on the verge of ruining everything? What if, what if, what if. Too many what ifs. She was a cop; she liked facts, not endless speculation.

Well, she wasn't going to uncover any facts while standing around her kitchen. She couldn't take any more navel-gazing. It was time for action. She threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, grabbed her phone and her ID and called a cab. Not that she was drunk after two glasses of wine, but she didn't feel completely level-headed either, due more to the adrenaline coursing through her than the alcohol.

She hadn't planned out what she was going to say, but when Carlton opened the door she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

"O'Hara! What are you doing here?"

"I'm really sorry about this," she said apologetically as she stepped into the apartment, pushing the door closed behind her, "but I have to know if that was just some kind of fluke."

"If what was –" he started to ask, but was silenced when she reached up, putting her hands on either side of his face, and pulled him down to kiss her.

His immediate response answered one of her "what ifs": she was definitely not misreading his interest. His hands were on her hips pulling her in close and his mouth was hungry and eager against hers, like he had just been waiting for this moment, but after a minute or so she could practically feel his natural caution reasserting itself.

"O'Hara," he gasped, pulling away from her, "what the hell are you doing? We can't…"

She didn't let him get far, keeping her arms around his neck and kissing his jaw, then the soft skin under his ear, feeling him shudder in response.

"Think of this as a team building exercise," she suggested, before dropping her mouth to the pulse point at his neck and sucking gently, and then it was her turn to gasp when he surprised her by lifting her up and pushing her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist, an action that felt as natural as breathing, and tried not to moan out loud at the sensation of him pressing against her right where she felt the most needy.

"I hate team building exercises," he growled, one hand sliding up under her sweater, warm and certain.

"I know. And if you need to convince yourself that you hate this in order to not feel guilty about it later, then I'm okay with that," she said, and kissed him again, licking into his mouth and tasting whiskey, feeling the scrape of stubble against her face, and she did moan now, because she could feel him hard against her, and the hand under her sweater was thrillingly close to breaching her bra, and his other hand had slipped down her hip to support her against the wall by cupping her bottom.

_Carlton Lassiter's hand is on my ass!_ she thought giddily, _and he's going to do me up against the wall!_, and she wriggled a little, hoping to get more friction against the place where she was throbbing with want.

"O'Hara…Juliet…" Lassiter said hoarsely as he broke the kiss, "if we…if we do this, it will change everything."

A tiny bit of sanity crept into her brain, and she nodded, looking into his eyes, the pupils wide and almost completely black with arousal, and even while most of her body was pleading with her to get on with things, she appreciated the obvious effort he was putting into restraining himself.

"You're right," she said, running her fingers across his lips. "It will change everything. But Carlton, maybe it's time for everything to change."

His response was to kiss her again, and holy crap, it was probably a good thing that she hadn't known years ago that her partner could kiss like this, or her career as a rookie detective would have come to an abrupt end due to lewd behavior on the job.

She was so caught up in what it felt like to have his mouth against hers, to feel his fingers finally curving around her breast, that when she felt the vibrating sensation against her rear end her first thought was _oh my god, how is he doing that?_, before she realized that it was her phone, which she had tucked into her back pocket earlier. Distantly, she could hear his phone ringing as well.

"I don't fucking believe this," Lassiter said breathlessly as she scrambled to pull her phone out of her pocket, and she wasn't sure if his incredulity was aimed at the interruption or at the fact that this was happening at all. She let the phone ring a couple of more times before answering, taking two deep breaths to steady herself.

"This is O'Hara," she said, as authoritatively as she could when she still had her legs wrapped around her partner's waist and his erection pushing insistently against her thigh.

"Hi Detective, this is Buzz. Buzz McNab? There's a woman down here at the station that says she needs to talk to you and Detective Lassiter."

"What?" Juliet asked, wondering if her horniness was fogging her thinking, because Buzz wasn't making any sense. "What woman?"

"She says that her name is Arianna Vasquez, and that she wants to turn herself in, but she'll only do it to you. Sergeant Allen is trying to call Detective Lassiter, but he hasn't picked up his phone. I'm sorry, I told Ms. Vasquez that it was your night off, but…"

"It's okay, Buzz. Let Allen know that I'll tell Lassiter myself. Tell Arianna that we're on our way, and keep me updated if anything changes. We'll be down there as soon as we can."

Hanging up, she slowly and with complete reluctance unwound herself from around Carlton.

"Arianna's at the station, saying she wants to turn herself in but that she'll only talk to us."

"Right," he said. He looked away from her, rubbing his hand across his mouth.

"Hey," she said softly, "we will be picking up where we left off. We're just hitting the pause button."

"Right," he said again, sounding unconvinced. "Let me get my jacket and my holster and we can go."


	5. Chapter 5

They didn't talk on the drive to the station, which suited Lassiter just fine, because he thought he might be having some sort of nervous breakdown. The idea that he had experienced a mental snap seemed far more plausible than the idea that his lovely partner wanted…him. Hell, the idea that O'Hara had been taken over by some sort of body-snatching aliens seemed more plausible. He reminded himself to check her later for signs that she had been brainwashed, hypnotized, or possessed.

Because it was impossible that what had just happened at his apartment was real.

He chanced a sidelong glance over to her in the passenger seat, where she was talking on the phone with Chief Vick to let her know what was going on.

There was another explanation too, one that was even more plausible than aliens. One so plausible, in fact, that he didn't even want to think about it. She was projecting certain feelings on to him because he had rescued her from the clock tower. She was grateful, and she was mistaking that gratitude for something more intense. In a few weeks or months, she would come to her senses and realize that she didn't want him, and then he would have to deal with her pity when she broke up with him. He started getting pissed just thinking about it. She could take her pity and shove it up her pretty little –

"Stop that," Juliet snapped, and he looked over at the passenger seat in surprise.

"I didn't say anything," he protested.

"I can hear you thinking," she said, her eyes narrowed. "I may not know exactly what kind of crap you're telling yourself, but I can guess."

"It's not crap," he argued, re-focusing on the road instead of on her, because right now it was a lot safer to hold a conversation with her without looking at her and remembering what it had felt like to have those lips moving against his, those hands in his hair, those breasts pressed up against his chest. "You're going to come to your senses soon and realize that this is a huge mistake."

"My _senses_?" she asked. "So I'm an irrational woman who doesn't really know what she wants?"

"You said it, not me," he muttered as he pulled into his parking space. He unbuckled his seat belt and reached for the door handle, but before he could open it Juliet's voice stopped him.

"We have work to do, and this isn't the time for this, but trust me Carlton: you haven't thought of anything that I haven't already considered."

"So you've checked yourself for any government mind control chips?"

"No," she admitted, and gave him a smile that was downright predatory, "but you're more than welcome to do a thorough examination of me later, if you like."

And then she was out of the car and striding purposefully towards the station, and all he could do was follow along and try to at least temporarily banish the images her words had conjured up so that he didn't embarrass himself in front of the other cops.

**

Once they were in the station, they were directed by Buzz to one of the conference rooms. Arianna looked up at them when they entered.

"So it's true. You really are cops."

"Yes," Juliet said, as they seated themselves across the table from her. "I'm Detective Juliet O'Hara and this is my partner, Detective Carlton Lassiter."

Arianna looked down at the table, shaking her head. "It seems like everyone I meet lately is lying about who they really are."

"What about you, Arianna? Did you lie about who you are?" Juliet asked. Lassiter remained quiet; O'Hara had established the connection with Arianna in the first place, so he let her take the lead. Besides, even with as much as he wanted to catch Zachary Copeland, it was difficult at the moment to think about anything other than the curve of O'Hara's breasts under her sweater and the memory of how soft her skin had felt under his fingertips.

"No," Arianna said quietly, "I never lied about anything. I didn't know what Zack was in to until Saturday night, I swear."

"Tell us what happened to you on Saturday night."

"After the two of you left the restaurant, I went back to the villa where Zack and I were staying and started watching TV. Just a little while later, like, less than an hour, Zack comes in and says that we have to go, right away. I had no idea what he was talking about or why he was so agitated, but he basically grabbed me by the arm and told me to follow him. It freaked me out. He had a car, not the one that we came in but one I had never seen before, parked about a block away from the resort."

"Where did you go from there?"

"He took me to an apartment on South Street, and we've been there ever since. The second night we were there, he finally told me that we had to lay low because he was wanted by the police. I wanted to leave. I told him…" she hesitated, then continued, "I told him that if he let me leave, I wouldn't tell anyone where he was. He said…" she started crying, and Lassiter pushed over a box of tissues.

"What did he say?" Juliet asked, while Lassiter tried not to jump in and insist that Arianna tell them where Copeland was now.

Arianna sniffled, blew her nose. "He said that he loved me too much to let me go."

"How did you get away from him?"

"A few hours ago he got a phone call. I don't know who from, but he got very agitated and said that he had to go out for a while. He locked me in a storage closet, but I was able to break the lock with a hammer I found in there."

"Arianna, we need to know what the address of the apartment is, and when the last time you saw Zack was," Juliet said, gentle but firm.

Still crying, Arianna gave her the information, and Lassiter stood up, ready to go. Juliet started to follow him, but paused at the sound of Arianna's voice.

"I must be the stupidest person alive," she said, wiping at her face. "I didn't just believe in Zack, I _loved_ him. I believed the two of you. What's wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you," Juliet said. "We've all made the mistake of trusting the wrong person. But there's nothing with wanting to believe the best about people."

Catching up with Lassiter, she said, "We need to get Arianna into a safe house," and he nodded impatiently.

"You take care of that. I'm getting some back-up and going after Copeland."

She gave him an exasperated look. "Right. You think I'm not going with you?"

"Then let's go," he said. "I feel like kicking in some doors."

Juliet stopped only long enough to ask Detective Dobson to make sure that Arianna was taken care of before following Lassiter.

"He's probably already gone," she pointed out. "If he's realized yet that Arianna escaped, he has to know that we're coming for him."

"Maybe we'll beat him back to the apartment," Lassiter said. "We'll have some patrol officers come along and search the building, guard the exits."

It was good to focus on work, to clear his head of things he was better off not dwelling on.

A patrol officer met them in front of the apartment building. "We have people stationed at all the exits, sir. No one has entered or left the building since we arrived."

"Call for more back-up to help search the place," Lassiter told him, and turned to O'Hara. "Are you ready to do this?"

She nodded, handing him his Kevlar vest.

"This could be a trap," Lassiter felt compelled to say as they made their way to the second floor apartment where Arianna said she had been held hostage. "She could be working with Copeland, setting us up."

"I know," Juliet said, her mouth a grim line. "But I don't know why she would have come to us just to set us up. If she's working with him, why not just get out of the area as quickly as possible?"

When they reached the apartment, they found the door open. Lassiter took point as they entered the apartment, O'Hara motioning for one of the patrol officers that had accompanied them to follow them in while the other two guarded the hall.

They had cleared the entryway and the small living room when Lassiter heard a sound from deeper into the apartment and could tell with a glance that O'Hara had heard it too. She nodded and they moved as silently as possible to a short hallway. He stopped in front of a closed door that presumably led to either a bathroom or bedroom, confident that O'Hara was behind him covering the hallway. He had just reached for the knob to open it when the door burst open and he was punched in the stomach, hard enough to make him stumble backwards.

He heard O'Hara start to issue the order for Copeland to stand down, but she cut off with a grunt of pain, and Lassiter recovered his footing to see that Copeland had apparently barreled into her, slamming her against the wall. He appeared to be saying something to her, but Lassiter wasn't close enough to make out the words. He started to move to drag Copeland off of her, but before he could take a step he was tackled by a second man coming out of the bedroom.

He could hear the officer who had entered the apartment with them – Harrison – running towards them and calling for assistance, but most of his attention was focused on trying to ascertain how O'Hara was doing while also trying to subdue the man attempting to get past him. He managed to get his assailant down just in time to look up and see O'Hara deliver a punch to Copeland's throat, causing him to stagger back far enough that she could get her gun trained on him.

After that, it was back to procedure, formally arresting Copeland and his accomplice, who refused to give his name, both men remaining silent throughout the process. As Harrison herded them into a squad car to take the station, Lassiter turned to Juliet.

"What was he saying to you? When he knocked you into the wall?"

"He just kept repeating 'where is she?' over and over. It was creepy." She rubbed the back of her head and winced, and Lassiter's expression darkened.

"Get a paramedic here," he snapped to a nearby patrol officer.

"Don't," O'Hara corrected firmly, and the officer looked between them in confusion. "Unless it's for you, Carlton. I'm fine."

"You hit your head," he argued. "You could have a concussion."

"It's just a bump. It's nothing."

"Don't be stubborn, O'Hara. You should have it looked at."

"I'll have it looked at as soon as you have yourself checked over for injuries."

He glared at her and she glared back. After a few seconds of that, he gave up, going to the car. "Fine. When you drop dead of a brain injury, don't come crying to me."

"And when you collapse from internal bleeding, I don't want to hear any whining from you," she snapped back.

"Great," he said. "Let's get down to the station and book these assholes."

Juliet got into the passenger seat, careful not to betray the fact that she could feel the bruise forming on her back from Copeland slamming her into the wall. Carlton drove in silence for a few minutes, before pulling over into a deserted shopping center parking lot.

"What are you doing?" She asked, confused. "Is something wrong?"

He looked over at her, his expression illuminated by the parking lot lights. "Are you sure that you're okay?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "I'm a little banged up, same as you, but I'm fine."

He nodded, not looking relieved exactly so much as…she squirmed a little as she realized how he was looking at her.

She had been so dumb, she thought dully, making her pros and cons list and trying to rationalize her way through her feelings. This wasn't rational, the way he was looking at her like he wanted to tear her clothes off and take her right there in the front seat of the car. It wasn't rational, the way she could feel her heart beating in her throat and the rush of desire along her nerves.

He reached for her and she went to him, sliding across the seat, letting him pull her into his lap. He reached down and fumbled with something, and she felt the car seat slide back with a pop, and that was better because she had room enough now to straddle him while they kissed.

Hot, desperate…but as heated as his mouth was against hers, his hands were gentle, like he knew that she was bruised. It was the adrenaline from the fight she knew, along with this new awareness between them. Not that the reasons why mattered.

She pushed against him, feeling him hardening, silently cursing herself for not wearing a skirt, when suddenly his hand was right there on her, between her legs, pressing the seam of her jeans against her clit. She gasped wordlessly, tearing her mouth away from his to stare at him wide-eyed, and he rocked his palm against her, the friction so, so, good, making her moan as the tension inside her twisted tighter and tighter.

He sucked in a breath at her reaction, watching her with something akin to fascination, and did it again, a slow roll: heel, palm, fingers, the warmth of his hand seeping through her jeans and underwear, and she felt herself flush all over.

"Carlton…" she whispered.

He did it again, never breaking eye contact with her, and she bit her lip to keep from whimpering. Even through the denim, he had to be able to feel how wet she was. When he did it a fourth time her whole body convulsed, her elbow banging against the steering wheel hard enough to make the horn blow. She collapsed against him, breathing like she had just run a seven-minute mile, burying her face against his shoulder.

The police radio crackled to life. A car wreck on Third Street. It was nothing to do with them, but when she raised her head at the noise, it broke the spell. She climbed clumsily off his lap, back to her own side of the car, willing herself to stop shaking. He tipped his head back against his seat, breathing raggedly. With a sense of shock, she realized that he still had his seatbelt on.

"I'm so sorry," he said after a long moment. "That was incredibly unprofessional. If you want to tell Vick –"

"Carlton," she interrupted, "it took both of us to be that unprofessional. Look, let's just get back to the station and get this case wrapped up. After that, we'll talk."

He nodded and started the car. They drove back to the station in silence.

**

"Copeland's lawyered up," was the first thing Vick said to them after they arrived back at the station. "Detective Lassiter, see if you can get anything out of his accomplice. We're running his prints through the system, but we don't have anything yet. It appears that they were in the apartment destroying evidence. The officers who investigated the scene found several destroyed laptops on the premises. The tech guys are checking now to see if they can get anything off of them." She sighed. "I just had McNab put on a fresh pot of coffee. You two should probably buckle in for a long night."

It was, in fact, well into the morning, after a night of ultimately fruitless questioning of Copeland and his accomplice, before Juliet conceded to herself that she was going to have to go home and get some sleep before she could function again.

She was printing out the final copy of her report to hand off to Carlton and quietly yawning into her coffee cup when she heard a familiar voice coming her way.

"Please, please, hold your applause. Gus and I know how much you all missed us while we were away."

"Oh god," Carlton muttered, rubbing his forehead as he came to stand beside her desk, "the circus is back in town."

"Be nice," she admonished him, as Shawn and Gus arrived at her desk, each carrying a small gift bag.

"Jules!" Shawn beamed happily as he spotted her, "How…whoa!" he stopped, putting a hand to his head and closing his eyes. "I'm sensing that you're working on a major case. Something that has you here round the clock." He opened his eyes. "Anything we can help with?"

"No thanks, Shawn. We made an arrest last night. We're just here tying up some loose ends before we call it a night."

"It's morning," Gus pointed out, and Juliet waved a hand dismissively.

"Potato, poh-tah-toe. Did you guys have a nice vacation?"

"We did. The Spam festival was even more amazing than you think it was. Next year we should all go together. And hey, we brought gifts!" Shawn said, as he handed her the gift bag he was holding.

She opened it and pulled out a small stuffed pig with a ribbon around its neck labeled with the Spam logo. She looked up at Shawn questioningly.

"Shawn, Isn't pork one of the main ingredients of Spam? So does the ribbon around his neck mean that this adorable little piglet is marked for slaughter?"

"That seems like an unnecessarily grim way of looking at it, Jules. I prefer to think that this little guy is like Wilma from _Charlotte's Web_ -"

"Wilbur," Gus corrected.

"And he was special enough to escape the chopping block."

"So he survived while all of his family and friends were murdered for cheap canned meat products? That's so sad! Poor little piggy."

Shawn squinted at her, clearly worried that he had somehow upset her, and then relaxed as she smirked at him.

"You're messing with me."

"Yes, I am," she agreed cheerfully. "Thank you for the piggy, guys. He's adorable."

Shawn grinned at her and Gus handed the bag he was holding to Lassiter.

"Don't fret Lassie, we didn't forget you!" Shawn said, as Lassiter reached into the bag and pulled out a snow globe. Inside was a tiny can of Spam, with delicate white flakes swirling around it. Lassiter stared at in horror. Juliet reached over and plucked it deftly out of her partner's hand, sticking it in a desk drawer where he couldn't see it.

"Guys, that wasn't nice," she scolded.

"Don't be mad, Jules, that wasn't his real present," Shawn said. Gus reached into the bag and pulled out a tie covered with pictures of Spam and handed it to Lassiter.

"We thought the blue would compliment your eyes," Gus said, "and then, when your eyes are bloodshot, like they are right now, the pink would compliment them too."

"You shouldn't have," Lassiter said dryly, holding the tie like it was something disgusting that he wished to have far away from him.

"So, what has you two pulling an all-nighter?" Shawn asked. "Hey, that sounds kind of dirty, doesn't it Gus? All-nighter?"

"No," Gus said. "It's a common term. Not dirty at all."

Juliet couldn't help it; she glanced at Lassiter and saw that he was blushing, no doubt thinking about how part of their all-nighter had been pretty dirty, which made her blush too. When she turned her attention back to Shawn, she saw that he was looking between the two of them, his mouth hanging open. Juliet felt a surge of panic go through her. Damn Shawn and his psychicness or perceptiveness or whatever it was.

"You've GOT to be kidding me," he said.

"What?" Gus asked, oblivious.

"Jules, what the hell? You and Lassie?"

"Spencer –"Lassiter growled, but Juliet cut him off.

"Carlton, don't. Shawn, why don't we go outside and talk for a minute?"

With one last fleeting look in Lassiter's direction, Shawn followed her out of the station. She perched on a bench outside, looking up at him. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and was looking anywhere but at her.

"Tell me that I didn't just see what I thought I saw," he said. Juliet wished that they could have this conversation after she had had a good night's sleep and a hot meal, but apparently she wasn't going to be that lucky.

"Please don't be mad about this, Shawn."

"I'm not mad," he said slowly, "I'm just confused. And freaked out. And okay, maybe a little mad, even if I don't have any right to be. You and Lassie? Really? Gus and I were only gone a week! What the hell happened?"

"It's not what you think. Or," she frowned, "maybe it is what you think. To be perfectly honest, Carlton and I don't really know what it is yet ourselves. But I know what I would like for it to be."

"But Jules," he said helplessly, pacing in front of her, "I thought…I thought we had something. You and me. I know that I missed my chance in the past, but I thought maybe we were moving in the right direction again."

"I know. I think that we both thought that maybe someday something would happen between us. God, I had such a crush on you Shawn, you don't even know." She smiled fondly at what felt now like a distant memory.

"'Had' I guess being the operative word," he said dryly, and she gave a sad little shrug.

"Things change, Shawn. I can't explain why. "

He dropped onto the bench beside her, still not looking at her. "Is this because of that night?" he asked, in an uncharacteristically small voice. "Because I went to Abigail instead of you? Because Jules, it would have _destroyed_ me if you had…if anything had happened to you."

Truthfully, she had asked herself the same thing when she realized that she wasn't attracted to Shawn anymore, and she gave him the answer that she had reached.

"No. No, I promise you, it really doesn't have anything to do with that. You absolutely made the right call that night. You saved Abigail's life."

"And Lassiter saved yours. And now you and he are together."

"I'm not sure that I would say we're together yet. But regardless, it's not because of that," she said gently. "Truly. What's happening now between me and Carlton has much more to do with us having become progressively closer over the years."

"I guess I always thought it would be you and me," he said sadly.

"I thought that for a long time too. But think about how we were on the Desiree Blake case a few weeks back. We weren't on the same wavelength at all. The whole thing was a disaster until I was back with Carlton and you were back with Gus. You're one of my favorite people in the world, Shawn, but I don't think we would work out as more than friends."

"I'm still not sure I would use the word 'disaster'," he said, "but I get your point. What I don't get is why you think things will work between you and Lassie. You're such different people."

"We are in some ways," she agreed, "but we have a lot in common too, starting with the fact that our jobs are very important to us. I know it's not fair to ask you to keep this under wraps, but I'm going to anyway. Like I said before, we aren't quite sure yet where this is going, and for the time being we'd like to keep it as private as possible."

"Your secret's safe with me," Shawn said. "I would never do anything to hurt you, Jules. You might not believe this, but I would never purposely do anything to hurt Lassie either."

"I know," she assured him. "Are we okay here?"

"Yeah. We're good. All I want is for you to be happy."

She reached over to hug him. "I'm working on it."

**

Lassiter drove her home. It had been a lot easier to act normal around each other at the station, when there was work to do and other people around. Alone, the awkwardness between them was like a third occupant in the car.

After nearly five minutes of silence, Lassiter asked "What did you tell Spencer?"

She had known that question was coming. "He knew something had happened between us. I didn't lie, but I didn't tell him anything he hadn't figured out already. It's okay, Carlton. He promised to keep it to himself."

Lassiter gave a snort of disbelief. "I know from experience that Spencer can't be trusted to be discreet about this."

"That was a long time ago. You were a stranger to him then, and from what I understand, you were threatening to arrest him. This is a completely different situation."

He parked in front of her house, turning to face her. "Even if that's true, O'Hara…Juliet…this isn't going to work."

Her stomach sank with disappointment at the certainty in his voice. "Carlton, we're both exhausted right now. Can't we talk about this later?"

"No," he said, shaking his head, "because this can't go any further. Last night, in that apartment, all I could think about was whether or not you were in danger. And then later, in the car…that should never have happened. No matter how much I…we were on-duty. That was an unforgiveable lapse in judgment."

She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm. "I'm not going to call what happened in the car a mistake, but I agree that it should never have happened while we were on-duty. I know that if we agreed to pursue a relationship, we would have to go to Vick and tell her, and she would probably assign us to new partners."

He was shaking his head again. "No. Jesus, O'Hara, do you have any idea what that would do to your reputation? Lucinda had to transfer out of the department to get away from the gossip. I won't have that happen to you."

"That's a risk I'm willing to take."

"Well, it's not one I'm willing to take. Besides that, the last thing that I want is a new partner. I know that after all of this, you may decide to go to Vick and insist on a new partner anyway, and I won't try to stop you if that's what you want. This attraction, or whatever it is that you seem to be feeling for me right now, I don't know where it came from, but I know that it can disappear as quickly as it appeared. You're the best partner that I've ever had, O'Hara. I don't want to lose that for some temporary fling."

"I don't want to lose it either," she said, "but Carlton…"

"No," he said with finality. "I know I'm right about this." He sighed, looking away from her, out the window. "Go get some rest, O'Hara. I'll see you at work tomorrow."


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: I can't apologize enough for leaving this story hanging for so long. I had a story due for a fic challenge on August 1, and trying to finish it in time became my priority during July, but it was never my intention to abandon this for more than a month. I also wanted to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who has left comments or kudos on this fic. It means a lot to me to know that someone enjoyed something I wrote.

Author's Note II: My entire knowledge of police procedure comes from watching TV shows. Not the serious, realistic shows that strive for accuracy, but the goofy ones. I comfort myself with the knowledge that _Psych_ never bothered with realism when it came to police work either.

Lassiter tried not to scowl at O'Hara, sitting in the passenger seat beside him, as she chattered with determined chipperness about an episode of _American Duos_ that she had watched the night before. The fact that she always attempted to make the best of difficult situations was irritating. Or, it would be irritating coming from anyone else; from her, God help him, he found it endearing. Which was incredibly irritating.

It had been two weeks since they arrested Copeland, two weeks of frustration on both a professional and personal level. The first week had featured a lot of uncomfortable silences. They had only talked about work and had done that sparingly, and he felt like he could hardly look at her without blushing like a gawky teenager. He still couldn't believe that he had let things get as far as they had. What had transpired between them in the car the night of Copeland's arrest seemed more like the kind of perverted fantasy he'd never allowed himself to have about O'Hara than something that had really happened.

It didn't help that Copeland walked out on bail a few hours after they arrested him, despite the fact that he had assaulted an officer and resisted arrest, making the entire episode feel sort of pointless; Lassiter would lay twenty-to-one odds that he would leave the country before he could be brought to trial.

But it was hard to worry too much about Copeland—or any case, for that matter—when the tension between him and O'Hara was so thick that he could barely stand to be in the car with her for long enough to get anywhere. Which, of course, was exactly the kind of thing he had been worried about months ago when he had first realized his feelings for his partner, that it would compromise their ability to do their job effectively. _Patience_, he cautioned himself. O'Hara wasn't a grudge-holder. She would move on from this quickly, and he could at least _pretend_ to move on from it himself, and, hopefully, they would be back to normal soon.

Spencer and Guster had come by the station once near the end of the first week at the request of the Chief, to see if Shawn could psychically divine which of three suspects in a robbery might be guilty, and after finishing the job they had come over to Lassiter's desk to nose around for other cases, or possibly just to say hello. He and O'Hara had been discussing the leads in an assault case when the terrible twosome walked up, and after approximately three minutes of watching them together, O'Hara's crossed arms, Lassiter's unwillingness to meet her eyes, Spencer had made a low sound of shock.

"Oh Lassie, you _idiot_."

"Spencer..." he started to say threateningly, because he already felt on a near-constant low-boil of anger and tension, and Spencer was more capable than most of pushing him right over the edge. Unsurprisingly, Shawn ignored the warning in his voice and kept going.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man? You think something better is going to come along? Or are you just that much of a masochist -"

"Uh, Shawn," Gus interrupted nervously "I think you should shut up now."

"But Gus, I don't understand how Lassie could..." he stopped abruptly, and for a brief, gratifying moment Lassiter thought that maybe he had perfected his death glare to the degree that it finally worked on the irrepressible Spencer, until he realized that Shawn was looking not at him but at O'Hara. He chanced a glance in her direction to see that her face was set like a stone, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed.

"Gus," Shawn said, changing tactics, "I'm sensing that we have work to do away from here today. Far, far away from here. Maybe in Timbuktu."

"Good thinking," Juliet said, her voice like an icicle.

"Great work, o psychic wonder," Gus grumbled, backing away with a polite, slightly fearful, nod in Lassiter and Juliet's direction. After they had gone, Juliet didn't say a word, just returned to her desk and her work.

At the beginning of the second week, having apparently made some sort of resolution to herself, O'Hara had started talking, about nothing and everything. He knew that she was attempting to smooth over the awkwardness between them by sheer force of her upbeat personality. It didn't work exactly, but he thought maybe that he preferred the chattering to the silence, because long silences from O'Hara made him uneasy.

On the other hand, the forced cheer in her tone was setting his teeth on edge. He wondered if it was naïve of him to hope that things could ever go back to the way they had been before she lost her damn mind and made him lose his in the process.

"…anyway, I wish you would start watching it again," she said. "You really should hear what those two podiatrists from Albany can do with an operetta."

"You know I refuse to watch ever since they canned Emilina," he said. "No one was even seriously injured when she threw those shoes. Bunch of whiners."

"Well, she did bean that soprano from Seattle with a stiletto. But I think it was how she crawled into the audience and wrestled the shoes away from audience members before throwing them that got her fired. I know I've told you this before, but your crush on her is disturbing," Juliet said, and he almost made a crack about his legendarily flawed taste in women before thinking better of it, but she clammed up like she knew what he had been thinking and bent her head over the file in her lap.

"Any thoughts on the case?" he asked, not wanting to be responsible for another long silence between them.

She shrugged. "The homeowners had been away for a week. Most of the neighbors probably knew, and there are a lot of teenagers in the neighborhood. There was a six-pack out of the refrigerator stolen along with a bottle of wine, plus an Xbox, an iPad, and a laptop. My guess would be kids. There are fifteen year old twins who live across the street. I think we should start with them."

He nodded because it was what he had been thinking too; the only problem with their agreement was that it killed the conversation between them. The silence between them felt brittle and tense after her attempts at conversation. She went back to studiously flipping through the report again, apparently reading over facts that she already knew, and he went back to internally cursing himself for ever letting himself lose his grip on reality for even a second and allowing things to reach this impasse between them.

They interviewed the neighbors and within an hour found a kid who cracked under the weight of O'Hara's disapproving frown and gave up his friends. Arrests were made and tearful recriminations declared, and Lassiter tried to take some satisfaction in getting young hooligans off the street (for at least the afternoon, until their parents bailed them out) and the swift and successful closure of the case, but even that wasn't enough to lift him out of his funk.

After the kids were booked it was back to their desks for a round of report writing. He had some calls to make regarding an older investigation, and she typed without once glancing over in his direction, which he knew because he couldn't stop looking at her while he talked on the phone. He thought he was being subtle about it until she suddenly stood and came over to his desk.

"Would you please stop glaring at me?" she snapped, keeping her voice low so that no one around could hear. It was satisfying in a way to know that she was irritable too, because it was hard to drive O'Hara into any kind of ill-temper.

"You're imagining things, O'Hara."

"I know when I'm being glared at, Lassiter."

He picked up a file at random from his desk and started leafing through it furiously so that he wouldn't have to look at her. "Did you come over here for a reason, or did you just want to lob ridiculous and irrational accusations at me?"

From the corner of his eye he could see her hands tightening into fists, but she kept her voice level and quiet. "I came over to ask you for the Alvarez file, but if I had known you were going to be an ass, I wouldn't have bothered."

He stood up abruptly. "If we're going to fight, let's get out of here."

She looked around the station to see that more than a few people were looking curiously in their direction. "Let me grab my jacket."

He wasn't even sure what it was they were fighting over. Him being an ass? She was used to that. Her being irrational? No, that was absurd, because she wasn't. He probably _had_ been glaring at her. As usual, everything was his fault.

They walked to the coffee shop two blocks away. By the time they got there, he wasn't in the mood for a fight anymore, but he imagined that she was gathering herself up to let him have it. They each got a cup of coffee and sat down at a table farthest from the other coffee shop patrons. She sighed and took a sip of her drink and he was relieved to see that she wasn't interested in arguing either.

"Are we ever going to be able to go back to the way things were?"

He stared off into the middle distance through the window. The sky was blue and cloudless, a picture perfect Santa Barbara afternoon, the kind that didn't suit his mood in the least. "I don't know," he said finally.

She fiddled with her cup, turning it around and around in her hands. "I don't want to let this ruin our partnership. I want us to just be able to move on from it."

_This is all your fault_, he wanted to say, no matter how unfair it was to put all the blame on her. _We could have gone on forever the way we were, but you had to bring all of this to the surface, and now I can't get past how much what I want and what I know is right are incompatible._

"I want that too," he said instead, and maybe he should have stopped there, but brutal honesty compelled him to add, "but it's hard to work with you right now, O'Hara. It's hard to even fucking _look_ at you right now."

She released the coffee cup and got carefully to her feet. "I see. I'm going back to the station to get some more work done. Don't worry, I won't bother you again."

There was a part of him that wanted to call after her, to chase after her, but it was for the best, he thought, to let her go.

**

Juliet was happy to be awakened at 3:09 in the morning by the ringing of her phone. She had been sleeping restlessly again, her usual bad dreams plaguing her along with her worries over her partnership with Carlton.

"Sorry to wake you, Detective," came the crisp voice of the night sergeant – Mullins, she pulled from her sleep-fogged brain – "but Detective Lassiter asked me to call you."

She was already on her feet, reaching into her closet for something to wear. "What's happened?"

"It's regarding the case you worked a few weeks ago involving Arianna Vasquez."

Juliet paused in the process of buttoning her pants. "What about her?"

"As you know, we were keeping her in a safe house until the trial, but earlier tonight the house was broken into and Ms. Vasquez was taken from it. The officer on duty was knocked unconscious, but when he woke up he named Zachary Copeland and one of his associates, Craig Hoskins, as the assailants."

"Hold on for a minute, please," Juliet said, setting the phone down so she could pull off the t-shirt she had been sleeping in and put on a bra and a clean shirt. She remembered reading about Hoskins in the file they had been given on Copeland when they had originally taken the case; he was muscle, used primarily as a bodyguard. When she picked the phone back up, she asked "Is Detective Lassiter going to the station or to the safe house?"

"Neither," Mullins said. "We have an informant who saw Copeland and two other people enter the office building he owns on 8th Street. Detective Lassiter and two patrol cars are headed there. Do you need the address?"

She shoved her feet into a pair of shoes, grabbed her holster, gun, and keys. "No, I know where it is. Let Lassiter know that I'm on my way."

She wondered while she drove why Copeland would make such a stupid, reckless, move when he had money to burn and contacts all over the world and could have fled the country before his trial, but she remembered the night they had arrested him, when he had had her by the throat and kept repeating "Where is she? Where is she?" and suspected that he was not entirely sane when it came to Arianna.

When she arrived on the scene Lassiter was already there, along with McNab and Officers Crowder and Gilmore.

"What's going on?" she asked, taking the vest that Lassiter handed her.

"The lights just went on on the nineteenth floor," he said, turning so she could check the straps of his vest to make sure it was tight, then doing the same for her. "He probably has cash or weapons or both up there. My guess is that he's going to try and make a run for it and take Arianna with him. There's more back-up on the way. Do you want to wait?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't want to leave her alone with him any longer than we have to."

"McNab, Gilmore, you're with us. Crowder, make sure no one else comes in until our guys get here."

They took the elevator to the eighteenth floor and used the stairs to go up the remaining floor, in the hopes of taking Copeland and Hoskins by surprise. However, before Lassiter could push open the stairwell door to the nineteenth floor, it swung open from the other side. Arianna stood there, her mouth dropping open in shock at the sight of them. She had a bruise on one cheek and the sleeve on her t-shirt was torn, but otherwise she looked unharmed.

Lassiter didn't waste time with niceties. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the stairwell, shutting the door behind her. "Where's Copeland?" he demanded without any preamble. Juliet gave him a reproving look, laying a gentle hand on Arianna's shoulder. She was trembling, obviously terrified.

"It's going to be okay," she said, ignoring the way Lassiter was vibrating with impatience beside her. "You're safe now, Arianna. How did you get away?"

"They were arguing over money," she said haltingly. "No one was paying attention to me, so I ran."

"Who was arguing? Was it Zachary and Craig Hoskins?"

Arianna nodded. "There's another man too, I don't know him. He was already here when we got here. He and Craig are both demanding that Zach pay them now, and Zach is refusing."

Juliet could hear shouting in the hallway; Copeland was looking for his erstwhile girlfriend. She handed Arianna off to Officer Gilmore. "Get her out of the building," she ordered. Lassiter gave them enough time to get back down to the eighteenth floor before nodding at Juliet and McNab to be ready and pushed the door open. Juliet saw Hoskins and another man immediately, going into an office at the far end of the hall. Lassiter and McNab started after them, with Juliet taking the rear. She had made it halfway down the hall when she heard the quiet _snick_ of the door to the stairway open, and she turned just in time to see Copeland disappearing through the exit. She tapped McNab, who was closest to her, on the shoulder and pointed to the door to indicate where she was going, and then turned to follow Copeland.

When she threw open the door to the stairwell he was still there, and as she moved in front of him with her gun raised, blocking his path down the stairs he swore in frustration and started to run, up the stairs instead of down.

"Stop!" she called after him, "Zachary, it's over!"

_What the hell are you doing?_ she wondered as she followed. The building only had twenty-five stories, so he had to know that he was about to run out of options, but he was like a trapped animal, running blindly towards any kind of escape.

They reached the top of the stairs and she followed him through the roof access door, raising her gun as she did. "There's nowhere left to run," she called after him. She wasn't prepared for the way he suddenly turned on her, aiming a fist at her face. She ducked, swung the hand holding her gun up to aim it at him, but he was on her immediately, trying to wrestle it out of her hand.

She kicked out, aiming for his knee, but he was too close. He tried to get her in a chokehold, but she hooked her foot around his ankle and brought them both down. _Where the hell are you?_ she thought irrationally in Carlton's direction, as her assailant tried to use his superior body weight to roll over and pin her down. She kneed him in the stomach and scrambled to her feet, and was struck with a dizzying sense of shock as she realized that she was standing near the edge of the roof, twenty-five stories up.

She could taste the musty cloth that Yin had used to gag her that night, feel the ropes around her again along with the certainty that she was going to fall, and for a moment she was paralyzed with fear, unable to even draw in a breath. Copeland was on his feet now, and he grabbed her from behind. The fear knotting her stomach and freezing her muscles gave way to sudden, hot rage, and she threw her elbow back into Copeland's face, hard.

He backed away, clutching his face, and she could see blood trickling from between his fingers. "You bitch!" he howled (or at least, that was what she thought he said; it was a little hard to understand him at the moment). "You broke my nose!"

The roof access door popped open and Lassiter and McNab appeared. _Good timing, guys,_ Juliet wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat.

"O'Hara, are you hurt?" Lassiter snapped, and she shook her head, tucking her gun back into her holster as the cuffs went on Copeland. Without thinking about what she was doing, she walked right up to the ledge and looked down, panic clawing through her at the sickening vertigo that overwhelmed her. She forced her eyes up, focusing on the stretch of sky and rooftops in front of her.

Behind her, Lassiter was keeping one eye on her while reading Copeland his rights, shoving him towards McNab when he was done. "Take him downstairs and let the paramedics have a look at him, then get him to the station," he ordered, and turned his attention back to O'Hara.

"O'Hara?" he said cautiously, and when that didn't get a response, "Juliet?"

"It's beautiful up here," she said softly, looking towards the faint pink light of the dawn on the horizon. Lassiter was less taken with the scenery because the sight of her so close to the edge made him feel like his heart was in his throat.

"O'Hara, we need to take Copeland in," he barked, trying to mask his anxiety with his typical crankiness. She didn't reply; if anything, she seemed to move even closer to the edge.

"How did you know we were up here?" she asked, still focused on the skyline in front of her.

"A patrol officer outside reported seeing people on the roof. Come on, we have work to do. Let's get out of here."

"I never used to be afraid of heights," she said softly, "but now I have nightmares, you know. Dreams about falling. Dreams where no one cares that I'm gone. Dreams where I can't save myself, anymore than I could that night. Dreams where you don't come for me." She sounded sad but matter-of-fact, and for the first time since that morning on the clock tower he thought he could clearly see the toll that experience had taken on her.

"O'Hara, I will _always_ come for you," he swore, and felt a surge of relief when she turned her face towards him, smiling.

"I know. I know you will, Carlton," she said, and his relief turned to horror as she turned away from him and stepped up onto the parapet.

"What the hell are you doing?" He was terrified of making any move that could startle her, so he stayed where he was. In fact, he felt rooted to the spot, no matter how much he wanted to go to where she was, scoop her off the ledge, and shake her until her teeth rattled for scaring the shit out of him.

"I'm facing my fears," she said, and her voice was trembling now, but she didn't make any move to come down. "Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Please," he said desperately, "please O'Hara, come down from there."

"It's okay, Carlton. I'm not suicidal, if that's what you're worried about." If he wasn't mistaken, she sounded slightly amused, which was all wrong given how panicky he felt.

"Glad to hear it. Now, would you please get your ass back over here?"

"I think…I think I lied to Shawn about something," she said, her voice dreamy and quiet, and he carefully went to stand next to her, not on the parapet but close enough to her that he could touch her. Grab her, if necessary.

"So? I'm fairly certain that Spencer has lied to you about any number of things," he said dryly, striving to sound as normal as possible.

"I think I lied to myself too. I told Shawn that what's happening between you and me now has nothing to with what happened on the clock tower, but…" she paused, staring off into the distance. "That's not true," she said finally. "I came very close to dying a few months ago. And for some reason, I've been trying to convince myself and everyone around me that that doesn't have anything to do with the decisions I've been making since them."

He was close enough now that he could look over the ledge, to the ground 200 feet below them. He closed his eyes briefly, swallowed hard. "O"Hara. Juliet. We can talk about this all you want. Just please come down from there."

"I'm sorry that I've screwed things up so much between us," she said softly. "I never meant to. I didn't know what I was doing until it was too late. But I want you to know that while it might have been impulsive, it was still real. The thing about almost dying is that it gave me some clarity about the things that are important to me, and Carlton, no one is more important to me than you."

Finally, finally, he reached out and put his arms around her and pulled her off the parapet, back against him. He didn't say anything – couldn't, really, past the lump in his throat – just held her close while they watched the sun rise together, comforted by the steady rise and fall of her breathing, until she stirred and said "We need to go down before someone comes up to find us."

He knew she was right, but still, he didn't move, and she didn't either except to rest her head back against his shoulder, until a few minutes later when he heard the sound of McNab calling his name.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: Thanks again to those who have been reading, and who have been so patient with me in finishing this fic. I hope it's been as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write. Comments are like gold.

It was nearly dusk again before she was able to go home, take a shower and change into her most comfortable lounge-around-the-house clothes: fleece top and shorts and her fuzzy socks. She and Carlton both had the next day off from work, and she planned on taking full advantage of the time off, starting with comfort food and alcohol. She found a frozen macaroni and cheese dinner buried in her freezer and ate it accompanied with two glasses of wine, trying to concentrate on the accomplishments of the day: Copeland in jail and highly unlikely to make bail again, Arianna safe, and maybe, hopefully, a new start in her relationship with Carlton. Not, perhaps, the new start she wanted, but at this point she would be grateful to just get their partnership – their _friendship_ \- back into working order.

She had caught him several times over the course of the day watching her, his expression soft with concern, and she knew he had to be worried over her erratic behavior on the roof. She wasn't worried herself, though; maybe her actions had seemed dramatic or out-of-character, but afterwards she had felt lighter, free of at least some of the fear that had plagued her since the clock tower.

She had just settled down with a _Law &amp; Order_ marathon when her doorbell rang.

She was genuinely surprised to see Carlton standing on her doorstep. "What are you doing here?"

"Facing MY fears," he said. "May I come in?"

She ushered him in, a tiny flicker of hope igniting in her chest.

He didn't say anything after she closed the door, and her initial impulse to offer him a drink or ask him to sit down died in her throat as she saw the way he was studying her. He was still wearing the suit he'd worn to work that day, minus the jacket and tie. The first three buttons of his shirt were undone and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and his hair was mussed like he had been running his hand through it.

It was, she thought idly, kind of stupid how attractive that was, so she tried to picture him pacing agitatedly around his apartment before coming over, muttering to himself about what he was going to say to her, because she was certain that was exactly what had happened, to see if that somehow dampened his attractiveness, but it didn't.

The next words out of his mouth, however, almost did the trick.

"It would be insane," he said suddenly, like he couldn't hold it in anymore. "_You're_ insane. You're suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress. Or you got to invested in pretending that we were married for our undercover assignment."

Juliet didn't know whether she should laugh or throw something at him. She settled for crossing her arms and glaring . "You came all this way on our night off to tell me that I'm insane?"

"Yes! I'm sure we can get you some kind of help. Therapy, or drugs..."

"You want to put me on drugs."

He nodded. "Whatever's best for delusions."

"We were undercover weeks ago for barely 24 hours and you think I might have gone all _Donnie Brasco_ on you?" It was funny, she thought, how she was able to maintain such a rational, even tone when she could feel that flicker of hope turning into fury at his bullheadedness.

"I admit, PTSD seems the more likely culprit, but I can't rule out any possibilities."

She took a deep, calming breath. It didn't work, but it at least allowed her to keep her pleasant tone. "Carlton. I'm not delusional. I might be insane, but if I am, it's only because you've made me that way."

"I'm just trying to look out for your best interests, O'Hara," he said desperately. "There's obviously something wrong with you."

"Me?" she yelled incredulously, finally dropping her pretense of calm. "There's nothing wrong with me! You, on the other hand...you're paranoid and cranky and stubborn as hell and you have too many guns and your politics drive me crazy and your squirrel fixation is disturbing and what the hell did Olympia Dukakis ever do to you, huh? And worst of all, you would rather choke on your own pride than admit you're wrong about something!"

He nodded, his expression shuttering. "Good. Great. I'm glad you're back to normal." He started to reach for the door handle, but she stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Wait. I'm not done."

"O'Hara, I'm fully capable of listing my faults even better than you can. If you don't mind, I'll save you the trouble and do it myself at my place with a bottle of Scotch."

She tightened her grip. "You're also loyal and dedicated and so goddamned brave that it scares me sometimes, and you're the best friend I've ever had, Carlton, and the last thing I want to do is lose you." She took a deep breath to steady herself before continuing. "The thought of not having you as a partner at work anymore scares me, and I know that's the price we would have to pay for pursuing anything more. I don't want you to think that's something I take lightly. But…" she put her hand against his face, wishing that there was some way that she could convince him of her sincerity beyond just words. "I can't pretend that my feelings for you haven't grown beyond friendship. I love you, Carlton."

He reached over and brushed his thumb across her cheek, his expression one of stunned amazement. "You..Juliet, this is such a bad idea for so many reasons." But he was leaning towards her, and she reached up to slide her arms around his neck

"I know," she agreed, "and you can tell me all about those reasons tomorrow, if you want. But for tonight could you please just…"

He kissed her and she sighed against his mouth, more out of relief than anything else because he wasn't denying this anymore. She tugged his hand to pull him further into the apartment, leading him to the couch. "Do you want a drink or something? I have wine—"

He kissed her again and she forgot all about the wine, and the couch too, and started pulling him towards her bedroom instead.

He stopped kissing her, which was very disappointing. "Where are we going?" he asked cautiously.

She plucked at his shirt a little, pulling it out of the waistband of his slacks so that she could get her hands on warm, firm, skin. "Where do you think?"

He sucked in a breath at the sensation of her hands on him, but still he hesitated. "Are you sure, O'Hara?"

She liked, she really, really liked the way he felt under her hands, though she thought that she might like it even better if he lost the shirt altogether. "I am so very, very, sure," she told him, and gave up her exploration of his stomach and back—with a note to return to it later, obviously—to pull him into another kiss, slow and deep, trying to convince him without words that she was more certain about this than she had ever been about anything in her life.

When she slid her hands back under his shirt so that she could scrape her fingernails gently down on his chest, catching the peak of a hardened nipple as she did so, he moaned against her mouth, then pulled back far enough that she could see how glassy his eyes were. "Okay, you've talked me into it," he said, and she took his hand to lead him to her bed.

She was briefly overcome with a sudden attack of shyness when they reached the bedroom, but then he was kissing her again and she felt like she was going to melt, or combust, or something equally ridiculous if she didn't have him right now.

She fell back onto the bed, and for just a moment he stood over her, looking her over like he couldn't believe this was happening, and Juliet shuddered with pure _want_ at the heat in his eyes.

"O'Hara," he said, and she was, no joke, going to punch him in the nose if he asked her again if she was sure about this, or suggested that this wasn't a good idea. But all he said was "Scoot back a little," and when she did, he was on the bed with her, kissing her again, and she felt her panic that he was going to back out of this subside, because he didn't seem the least bit interested in stopping.

His large, warm hands pushed the soft fleece of her shirt up, and she gasped as he palmed one of her breasts, the slightly calloused thumb rubbing across her nipple, making her arch eagerly into his touch. She pulled urgently at the buttons of his shirt, wanting to finally have the freedom to explore him without any impediment. While she divested him of his shirt, he sucked at the soft skin of her neck, biting gently and making her moan.

She ran her hands across the smooth, hard muscles of his back, a little thrill going through her as she took in his broad shoulders and well-formed arms. Maybe she should hide all of his shirts, so he would be forced to walk around without one all the time. She resolved to remember that idea later, when she could give it more thought, because it was growing increasingly difficult to think when he was kissing the soft skin of her belly, skipping past her shorts to plant light kisses along the exposed skin of her inner thigh. Her clit gave an interested throb as he edged a little higher, nosing along the hem of one leg of her shorts.

"Holy crap," she gasped, "Carlton..."

"Juliet," he said softly, "relax."

"I'm not sure I can when you're...down there," she admitted, which she knew was ridiculous since she had been the one pushing for this. But having him actually here, about to cross this huge barrier between them...it was overwhelming. A little bit terrifying, even.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No!" she said immediately, before he even had the sentence out.

He smiled at her then, a warm and intimate kind of smile that she didn't think she'd ever seen from him before. "Then let me make you feel good, okay?"

"Okay," she whispered, and then he was tugging the shorts and underwear down and tossing them to the side, leaving her feeling vulnerable and exposed. He paused then, swallowing hard and closing his eyes briefly.

"Everything okay, partner?" she asked apprehensively.

"Yeah," he said, his tongue darting out to lick his lips nervously, "I just can't believe this is actually happening."

Somehow, his nerves made her feel more at ease. "Oh, it's happening. Or at least it will be if you get a move on," she teased.

"You think we're moving too slow?" he asked, pulling her knees apart and moving between her legs, and her capacity for coherent thought took a look at the situation and called it a night.

"I don't...I think...oh my god, CARLTON," she yelped as he bent his head and licked her right where she was wettest and hottest.

He took his time about it, and she felt like she was experiencing some kind of sensory overload—the feeling of his mouth, hot and greedy against her, the long, soft swipes of his tongue, the sensation of his hair brushing against the inside of her thighs, his hands stroking along her hips down to her calves—the orgasm hit her like a bolt of electricity traveling up her spine and shorting out her brain.

And he didn't stop. In fact, he seemed to redouble his efforts. It struck her that he was as confident here as he was at the shooting range or in the interrogation room. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to him, and when he finally slid a finger into her and she came for the second time, it was like feeling parts of herself sparking to life that had been numb for months; she could feel the euphoria all the way down to her toes.

When Carlton raised his head to look at her, he found her with her hands over her face and her shoulders shaking, and he felt sick with panic.

"Juliet! Are you all right? Did I do something..." he stopped as she lowered her hands so that he could see that she was...

"Are you _laughing_?" he asked in disbelief. "Was it so bad that it was funny?"

"I'm sorry!" she gasped, still giggling but trying to stop because he looked completely freaked out. "It's just...that was soooo..." she gave up trying to find words to describe how good she felt, how amazing that had been, because no words were adequate."Come here," she said instead, and reached for him to pull him into a kiss, tasting herself on his lips, still smiling as aftershocks continued to zing along her nerve endings. After a moment he relaxed into the kiss, apparently deciding that she wasn't laughing at him after all, and she wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in closer, feeling him hard against her.

"I want to make you smile too," she said, not even caring how cheesy that sounded, as she reached for the waistband of his pants, but he stopped her before she could do more than unbutton them.

"Wait," he said hoarsely, "do you have...I need..."

"Oh god, I wasn't thinking. Medicine cabinet," she gasped, and started to sit up. "I'll get it."

"No, I'll do it," he said, and she flopped gratefully back down, because she wasn't certain her legs could hold her up right now anyway.

Lassiter was actually relieved for the opportunity to back off for a minute so that he could try to regain some semblance of control. He leaned against the sink, breathing hard, with the taste of her in his mouth, the fresh memory of how it felt to have her writhing with pleasure beneath him, moaning his name, and oh god, he was going to screw this up somehow. Sure, she had seemed to enjoy herself so far—the laughing threw him at first, but in the end it seemed like such a Juliet reaction—but that didn't mean that there wasn't still time for him to completely—

"Carlton! Stop thinking and get in here and do me!"

Right. His partner was waiting on him. He quickly opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the box of condoms he found there, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he did: flushed face and dilated eyes and a smile almost as wide as the one Juliet had been sporting a few minutes ago, because for all his nerves, he couldn't remember the last time he had been this happy.

Back in the bedroom, he found Juliet pulling off the sweatshirt that he had failed to remove from her before, and his brain shorted out at the sight of her perfect breasts and hard nipples and the pretty blush spreading across her creamy skin.

She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow at the box in his hand. "You brought the whole box? Good thinking."

"Don't get too excited," he warned her. "I'm not seventeen anymore."

"Good," she sighed, pulling him back onto the bed with her. "Seventeen year olds don't know what the hell they're doing."

"You do this with a lot of seventeen year olds?" he asked, running his hand down her side, loving how responsive she was to his touch.

She punched him in the arm. "Don't be gross. I wouldn't call it a _lot_."

"Ow! I don't know what you have in mind, O'Hara, but my safe word is 'vegetarian'."

She snorted with laughter and kissed him, her mouth urgent and greedy on his, and any uncertainty he might of felt faded in the face of her sureness. He kissed her chin, her throat, licked at the soft undersides of her breasts, and allowed himself a moment of smugness at the way she gasped when he took one of her nipples into his mouth.

This time he didn't stop her when she reached for his zipper, and it was his turn to gasp at the sensation of her warm hand wrapping around his cock, closing his eyes and willing himself to think of unsexy, cliche things like crime statistics and liberals (except Juliet probably considered herself a liberal, and she was the very definition of sexy to him, so his logic was tangled and confused and maybe this wasn't the best time to try and figure out an issue this complicated). Her hand moved achingly slow on him, her lips leaving a trail of soft, fluttery kisses down his chest, and this couldn't possibly be happening, Juliet O'Hara touching him intimately, her eyes glowing with lust. He slid a hand between her legs, finding her slick and hot, and she released him to reach for the box on the nightstand.

"I can't wait anymore," she whispered against his mouth, like it was the dirtiest secret she had ever shared, "I want you, Carlton."

Her hands were trembling so badly that she dropped the silver packet that she pulled out of the box onto the bed, and he picked it up only to find that he was shaking too. She smiled then, clasping his hand against her chest.

"We'll do it together," she said softly. "Isn't that how we work best?"

He nodded dumbly as she tore open the packet and handed him the condom, her hand following his down to smooth it onto him, and then she was wrapping her legs around him and welcoming him inside, arching up to meet him, and he could only look down at her in wonder.

"Wow," she gasped, "_wow_, Carlton,"

"Yeah," he agreed, rocking into her, because _wow_ indeed. She stretched beneath him, her head tilting back on the pillow exposing the column of her throat, and he leaned down and sucked at the soft skin there. He could feel her legs tightening around him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, then her hands moving to his face to bring him to her for a kiss, her tongue sliding along his in a way that had him seeing stars.

He wished he could stretch this moment out forever, but when her body clenched and shook around him he was a goner.

Afterwards—after he had rolled off of her so that he didn't crush her, after he had discarded the condom in the trashcan on the other side of her nightstand, after she had curled up against him—he wrapped his arms around her and sighed.

"So, what was it you called this before? A team-building exercise, right?"

She laughed and patted him on the chest. "I've never felt so in sync with you, partner. But," she said gravely, "I'm afraid we're going to have to do it again." She held up her foot so that he could see that she was still wearing her fuzzy socks. "You didn't even get me all the way naked this time."

He rolled over, pinning her to the bed. "What an embarrassing oversight," he agreed. "We'll just have to keep doing it until we get it right."

***

He woke up some time later to the sensation of Juliet's tongue dragging across one of his nipples. He gasped, and she smiled up at him.

"I hope you don't mind that I woke you up."

"Best wake-up call ever," he said sincerely, tangling his hands in her hair as he brought her up for a kiss. She sighed happily against his mouth, her fingers tracing idle patterns across his chest, before she pulled away and sat up, straddling his upper thighs and trying not to laugh at the way his gaze bounced between her face and her breasts.

"I've wanted to do this for a long time," she admitted, scraping her fingernails lightly down his chest, feeling the tickle of crisp hair against her fingertips.

"I wouldn't have stopped you," he said breathlessly, and she smirked, her hands still stroking downward but deliberately avoiding his cock, which lay flushed and hard against his stomach. She tickled his ribs instead, making him squirm beneath her.

"Yes you would have. You would have said 'O'Hara, keep your hands to yourself!' and chastised me for being unprofessional."

"No I wouldn't...I...Juliet, please..." he trailed off into incoherence as she finally wrapped her hand around him. She bent forward, kissed his stomach and licked around his belly button, making him moan, before she sat up again.

"Speaking of professionalism," she said sternly, "there's something work-related that I've been meaning to discuss with you."

"And you want to talk about it _now_?" he gasped.

She nodded, leaning down again, close enough so that he could feel her warm breath on his erection.

"Yes." She rubbed her palm over the head of his cock.

"Juliet! Jesus, I can't..."

She raised her head to look at him, because god he was hot, moreso even than usual at the moment, before returning to the business at hand, so to speak.

"Carlton," she paused to run her tongue down and then back up the length of him, enjoying the way he arched and jerked, his hands tightening in her hair, "I think it's time we discussed the benefits of you letting me drive more often," she said, and finally took him into her mouth.

(Later, he would argue that under the circumstances, he would agree to anything she wanted, and that her methods were cheating. She would ask him if he wanted her to stop, and he would say that fair play was overrated and that he was perfectly fine with cheating.) (The next time they had to go to a crime scene, she drove.)

The next time he woke up he found the other side of the bed empty, and after pulling on his pants he followed the smell of freshly brewed coffee to her kitchen, where she sat with a mug in her hand and her head bent over a newspaper, a scene so domestic and comforting that it made him weak in the knees. She turned towards him, relaxed and content. "I didn't know what you would want for breakfast. I have cereal, and some bananas, and yogurt, and eggs, and bread for toast."

"Just coffee is good right now," he said, reaching into the cabinet where she kept the mugs.

She bit into her own piece of toast. "You should eat something," she said mildly. "You need to keep your strength up."

He raised his eyebrows, amused. "Why? Am I going to be doing something strenuous today?"

She shrugged, struggling not to smile. "You never know."

He decided that she was right and helped himself to a bowl of cereal, stealing the front page of the newspaper away from her as he sat down.

"Hey!" she protested, snatching it back, "_Mine_!"

He sighed theatrically. "Is this what it's going to be like every morning, O'Hara? You hogging the paper and forcing me to make my own breakfast?"

She didn't bother to hold back her smile this time. "Every morning?"

He blushed and applied himself to eating his cereal. After a moment, he looked up to see that she was still smiling. In fact, if he were of a less practical bent, he might even think that she was glowing.

"Every morning," she said again. "I like the sound of that."

He did too, but all this sunny optimism went against his nature. "We'll have to talk to Vick tomorrow," he reminded her, and she sobered, nodding.

"I know. I'm not looking forward to it, but I know that it has to be done. But can we save that for tomorrow?" She reached over and caught his hand in hers. "Today, I'd like to just enjoy this. I thought we might…" she paused, not sure if she should say what she was thinking or not. She knew that he valued his private time, and that sometimes he needed to be alone to process events after they happened.

"Thought we might what?" he asked curiously.

She went to the sink to put her dishes away, endeavoring to sound casual. "I was planning to go to the Farmer's Market this morning and I was hoping you might come with me. And then I thought we could maybe go by your place so you pick up some clothes so that you could stay here another night," she said in a rush. "But you don't have to if you don't want to! It's up to you, really."

He paused, his spoon halfway between the bowl and his mouth. "You want me to stay again tonight?"

"Only if you want to!" she stressed. "I understand if you already have plans for the day, or if you want some time to yourself."

He pushed the cereal away and stood up abruptly, going to where she stood. "Why would you think that I wouldn't want to stay again tonight?"

"I just want you to know that it's okay if you need space."

He considered her for a moment, then reached forward to run his hand through her hair, leaning forward to kiss her tenderly on the forehead. "Maybe I didn't make this clear last night," he said, "but I am crazy in love with you. I'll do whatever you want me to do, Juliet."

"Oh," she said breathlessly. "Okay, then. I think what I want you to do right now is kiss me."

He happily obliged, and when she capable of thought again she found that she was sitting on the kitchen counter with her legs wrapped loosely around him and no memory of how she had gotten there.

"Anything I want, huh?" she asked, and he nodded.

"I'll admit, so far it's been very easy to follow through on that."

"So if I want you to spend the weekend with me, you'll do it?"

He kissed her ear, nipping it lightly. "Yes."

"And if I ask you to go shopping with me to help me pick out a new comforter for my bed, you'll say yes?"

He traced a delicate path along her jaw with his lips, stopping only to nod and say "yes."

"And if I want you to come to the pound with me when I go to adopt a kitten—no, _two_ kittens, so they can keep each other company while I'm at work—you'll do it?"

That one did make him pause, pulling back far enough to look her in the eye. "Seriously, O'Hara?"

"I miss having cats," she said. "You'll like them, Carlton. Cats are very self-sufficient and they don't take crap from anyone."

"Fine," he sighed. "Yes."

She threaded her fingers through his hair, liking the way he shivered a little at her touch. "And if, one day in the completely indeterminate future, I want to go on a real honeymoon with you, do you think you might do that?"

"O'Hara," he said, as he bent to kiss her again, "I'd be honored."

The End


End file.
